A spot with a view in the High Note Skybar

It has already been years since I took this photo in the High Note Skybar in the center of Budapest. I looked at it already a few times, but never posted it. The reason was simple. As this is a bar, I had to hurry, as there were people around. And in my hurry, I completely forgot to move my camera backpack. So it was nice and prominently visible in the photo. And it was in a spot where it was just hard to remove. But to be fair to myself, it was in a shadow, and it was already late, so it was not that visible through the viewfinder.

Here is where the new Generative Fill in Photoshop (beta) comes in. With it, it took me seconds to get rid of the backpack. It worked almost like magic. If I wanted to remove it traditionally, with cloning and painting, it would be just too much work to look natural. It’s really lovely how by introducing a new tool, Photoshop can give new life to photos that one would discard previously.

But it’s not without problems. I have been running into an error message often. It says “The generated images were removed because they violate user guidelines.” For instance, in this photo, there was water spilled on the table. Generative Fill would refuse to remove it. I tried different selections but had no luck. I presume that this is a result of the feature being still in Beta, and hopefully, they will resolve it quickly.

This is actually the biggest issue with all the AI tools there. That it can just refuse to work. A crop tool with always crop, the brush will always paint, but the AI can just not work, for no apparent reason, and that’s not good.

This photo is a two-shot vertorma, each shot blended from 3 photos. All done in Photoshop.

New Super ultra-wide wallpapers

The super ultra-wide page keeps being the most popular part of the blog for a year now, so let’s do another update today.

In this update, new pictures from Bratislava, Porto, Paris, and Zadar. As always, these are in 5120x1440px resolution, so perfect for a 32:9 monitor. Also as always, feel free to share them further, just please link back here and give me credit as the author.

The next one to be updated is the 4K selection, as that one is lacking a bit right now. Or would you prefer a different resolution?

Exploring the colors of Spring

And here are a few photos I took today. I went with shallower DOF here, to give them this soft look. All taken handheld with the Canon 70-200 F2.8 lens.

I decided to share them all in a higher resolution (2560px tall or wide) and without a watermark, so if any of you would like to use them as phone/tablet wallpapers, you can easily do so.

View from the Sky Park towers

Recently I posted a few different photos of the Sky Part towers in Bratislava, so how about today a picture was taken from the top of one of them. This photo is not that recent, so you can still be missing the 4th tower in the background. Either way, it makes for an interesting view. I actually wanted to take the photo a bit later, during the blue hour, but it became so windy up there that day, that I could not hold the camera steady enough. The wind would move the whole tripod around; if I were not holding it, it would blow it away.

Still, this photo is a vertorama, from two shots. Each shot blended from three exposures. Edited in Photoshop. I used the 17mm tilt-shift lens here, and if you don’t know what kind of lens it is, or how it’s used, check out my guide here.

Lago di Braies reflection

I still have many photos that I never edited or posted, like this one from Lago di Braies, from all the travels I did over the many years. There are different reasons for not doing so. Either they are too similar to what I already posted, I could not get the result I wanted in editing, or it was just too much work to remove stuff I did not like. But as the times change and the programs get better, it is easier to get the result now. That is why one always should take photos in RAW, as you can always go back and edit what you got.

So for today, I went back through my photo archives, to my trip to the Dolomites in Italy, to the Lago di Braies, and edited a photo I took that day. This is a blend from 3 exposures, created in Photoshop, with some editing done with Nik Collection Color Efex. I used the 12mm Laowa lens here, to get a nice wide shot. A little behind-the-scenes shot on the side here.

Btw. I also upped the resolution of the photos I’m posting here, up to 1800px wide. As the resolution of screens went up quite a lot in recent years, one just has to keep up. I also updated to a 32-inch 4K screen and the 1350px wide I used to use before,  just looks tiny on such a screen. And it’s just the same on phones and tablets. I have not decided yet, but maybe I just go even bigger, jump to 2K, or even directly 4K resolution. Who knows what the future brings, it’s easier to change before technology catches up.

What do you think? Rather smaller images, so the page loads quicker, or better to go bit, and focus on the quality and look?