The hill around Danube are just filled with castles. Most of them are ruins, but they are all cared for, and all provide great vantage points for photos of the area. And this is one is from the ruin above Spitz. To be exact, this is the Hintenhaus ruin.

Btw. I hope you are all busy voting in the Photo editing contest here :)

This is mostly a single exposure, with a second one only used to brighten few shadows. Edited in Lightroom and Photoshop.

Technique: Photoshop Edit, Number of exposures: 2, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones MkIII Adapter, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 16mm, Aperture: 14, Middle exposure time: 1/60s, ISO: 100, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.358490, 15.406879

The time to submit entries for the Photo contest sponsored by Aurora HDR from Macphun & Trey Ratcliff has ended. Now it’s time to vote for your favorites, to choose the peoples choice winner. Head over to this Facebook album and like the one, or multiple, that you think are the best edits.

The voting is until the end of this week, when both the jury selection and people choice winners will be announced.

Also don’t forget to check out out sponsor Aurora HDR. You can try it right now by downloading a trial from Aurora HDR web-page.

Today I will show you how I edited this photo, even if it’s not a HDR. Maybe even that will be interesting to some of you :)

So let’s start with comparison of the final and original photos. As you can see, as it’s a fog shot, the photo is very low contrast, and quite bland.

I did quite a few edits in Lightroom. Bumped up the contrast a lot, toned down the highlights of the bridge, opened up the shadows, added a bit of clarity and vibrance. From there I opened the photo in Photoshop.

In Photoshop I did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up):
1. The Lightroom result
2. A copy on which I cleaned up the dust spots
3. Another copy, on which I removed few of the lights in the distance, and a partially visible ship on the right. They bothered me in the composition, as I wanted to focus only on the bridge (I like to do bigger edits on new layers, to not do have to start from the beginning in case of any mistakes)
4. Bit more contrast added using curves
5. Added a little overall saturation, to make the colors more dominant.
6. Added noise to the sky and the water, to prevent color banding from creating.
7. Color Efex Tonal contrast, set to blend mode color at smaller opacity.
8. Color Efex Tonal contrast, set to blend mode luminosity. This is the same as the previous layers, I just duplicated it and changed the blend modes, so I can choose where the effect and where the color is applied. I used the color with smaller opacity, and the detail with a custom painted mask, so it’s just on the bridge and the shadow.
9. To finish up, I bumped up the saturation again by a little (+2, so very tiny adjustment)

And that’s all I did with this photo, check out the Process category, to see all other process posts I posted on the blog before.

Don’t forget, only 24 hours left to join my photo editing contest. Now is your last chance :)

And today, here is a photo I took earlier last year at the Kuchajda lake. The sunset that day was a bit boring, but for a moment, a cloud right opposite of the sunset caught this wonderful color. So with a bit of running around the lake, I managed top get a photo of it :)

This is a blend of two exposures, done in Photoshop.

Been a bit busy today, so no new photo or article today. But instead, I would like to remind you that you only have 48 hours left to enter my photo editing contest sponsored by Aurora HDR. And also, here are two new 3440×1440 wallpapers for you :) As always you can get them from the wallpapers page.