Oh.. is it Monday again? So again time for a process post here :) For today, I will show you how I edited this photo of the Dubai marina, taken from the Palm Jumeirah, sometime around midnight. So lets start :)

Let’s first take a look at the finished photo and the starting 0Ev exposure.

Finished photo

Original 0Ev exposure

As you can see, based on the camera light meter, the photo would be just too bright. I took only 4 exposure for it because of that, as I was certain, I would just not need the +2Ev exposures. So as always, I opened all in Lightroom, where I corrected the purple ting and changed to a little warmer color balance. Also I removed chromatic aberrations and corrected the horizon line.

All exposures

Tweaked in Lighroom

From there, I exported everything as 16-bit tiff files and opened in Oloneo Photoengine. Added strenght, a lot of contrast and made the photo even warmer. From there I loaded everything into Photoshop and continued from there (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2. -2EV exposure, to darken few bright spots n the photo
3. +1Ev exposure, to brighten few areas that were still too dark
4. removed noise using Imagenomic Noiseware
5. wanted to go for a more softer feel, so used motion blur for the whole image and then masked it only onto the water
6. added overall more contrast to the photo
7. added even more contrast to the water, and few areas on the buildings

Combined in Photoengine

Photoshop edit

And that’s all I did with this image. To find out more on how I edit, check out the guides and before after categories on this blog, or check out my video tutorial series here: