For today’s process post, I chosen one of my new year’s fireworks shots. But before I start, just a little reminder, that if you would like a free eBook about how I shoot and edit fireworks shots, you just need to subscribe to my newsletter.

But let’s start, this is the photo will be looking at:

This was a single RAW edit, and the photo looke like this from the camera:

I started as always in Lightroom. As this was a single RAW edit, I did much more than I usually do. I corrected the lens distortion, toned down the higlights, added a lot of contrast and vibrance. I also corrected the horizon and cropped the image. After the edits it looked like this:

I then continued to export three versions of it. One normal, one underexposed and one overexposed. I loaded them all into Photoshop and continued with the blending. My main goal was to add more contrast and detail into the image, and to brighten the foreground. So I did the following (layers numbered from bottom up):
1. normal exposure as start
2. overexposed version to brighten the foreground
3. added contrast to the basic mid-tones (the photo was very flat)
4. Color efex Pro contrast to get more local contrast to the image
5. darkened down the dark’s of the image, to still add more contrast
6. underexposed version to darken the highlights of the image (castle and fireworks)
7. little bit of contrast, just on the fireworks
8. the overexposed version once more, as the foreground got to dark due to the edits
9. more contrast overall
10. desaturated a little the oversaturated colors (mask created using TK actions)
11. still more darkening of the dark areas
12. Color efex Tonal contrast to get more definition into the sky

And that was all. As you can see, most of the edits were just to get the contrast right.

Another week, another processing Tuesday. To make it a little different, I chosen to show you how I edited my first star trails shot. And for those who never did a shot like that, this post will also show how to combine the images. So here goes.

For my final result:

I took 46 exposures, each one taken at 30s, f2.8 and ISO 800. They all looked something like this, just with the stars in different positions.

I started my work as always in Lightroom, where I applied noise reduction, cropped the image and removed chromatic aberrations and lens distortions. I also corrected the white balance.

From there I loaded all the images into Photoshop Layers. I selected all the layers except the first one and changed the blending mode to Lighten. That means that Photoshop will choose the lightest pixel for every spot in the photo from all the layers.

I then hidden all the layers, except the first one, and one by one I went through all the layers, checking if it contains any trails from passing planes. If I seen any, I added a layer mask, and removed it.

After that I merged all the layers, so I don’t have so much layers to work with and continued as follows (layers numbered from bottom up)
1. the merged layer
2. one of the exposures, where the tree was lighten up by car lights. I added it to brighten the tree
3. I removed few items in the foreground I didn’t liked
4. Color Efex Pro contrast on the foreground, to brighten it up and bring out the details
5. curves to add medium contrast
6. levels to bring out all the white areas in the photo, specially the stars
7. hue/saturation to tone down the red color cast from the tree
8. just a merged layer, I needed to apply a action on (and forgot to delete :))
9-10. added glow, using the glow action in my tutorial
11. added a little more contrast
12. added more saturation to under saturated areas, the mask was created using TK actions.

And that’s all I did here.

The week again passed so quickly. I feel like it was Tuesday just yesterday. But as it is again Tuesday, as traditionally, there is a process post today. I chosen one of my recent photos, which was edited using manual blending. So here goes.

To get to this photo:

I started as always in Lighroom. Corrected a crooked horizon, removed chromatic aberrations and applied lens correction. After that I loaded all the brackets into Photoshop. I took 5 exposures, but in the end, I used only 3.

When I blend images, I like to start with the exposure with the best sky. The reason for this is, that the sky is the hardest to blend, and you can easily create patches of color that does not fit together. So I try to do as fewer edits there as possible. So my edits were (numbered from bottom up):

1. -1EV exposure, as I like the sky on it
2. 0EV to brighten the buildings and the middle part
3. +1EV to brighten the middle part even more
4. Color Efex pro contrast on the brighter parts of the image
5+6. Added glow to the photo. It boosts the colors and adds more contrast (more in my glow tutorial)
7. The shadows were still too dark, so I brightened them using curves
8. Color Efex detail extractor to get more detail in the clouds. I only painted the effect where I needed it.
9. Noise reduction on the sky
10. Added contrast to the Basic mid-tones
11. More vibrance on the sky.
12. Color Balance to remove a little bit of the red from the photo
13. Overall curves to add a little bit of contrast to the photo
14. Noise reduction on the water, as it still needed some
15. Added back a little bit of uniform noise to the same area, to prevent creation of color banding.

And that was it.

And here you can see the original 0EV from the camera.

For this weeks process post, I have for you something a little different. In this one I will show you how to create this blurred effect in Photoshop. It quite simple, and it can create a really interesting result.

So to get a result like this:

I started with this photo as the base. It’s one of my older HDR, and this effect also looks best on scenes with trees.

So the first thing I did was to duplicate the layer. On this new layer I used the Motion blur (Filter -> Blur -> Motion blur) and played around with the values until I got the look I wanted.

Next I added a mask to the blurred layer, and using a black soft brush at 100% I brushed over the parts where I wanted the original photo to show through. Then I changed the opacity to 30% and softened the transition.

That actually makes the whole effect. But I also suggest running a filter like Color Efex Pro contrast, as the blurred version will be lacking in the contrast area.

And that’s it. If you give it a try, and create an interesting result, feel free to share your results in the comments :)

An we have another Tuesday here, and another process post. For today I have chosen an evening shot from Paris, so lets take a look at it.

For this photo, I took 6 exposures, but used only 5. I had no need for the +2EV. As always I started in Lightroom, where I corrected the white balance, horizon line a cropped the image. From there I loaded all the brackets into Photoshop and continued with the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. -2EV exposure to start with, as I usually start with the one, from which I want to use the sky
2. -3EV exposure to tone down few bright spots
3. -1EV exposure to brighten the foreground
4. 0EV exposure to brighten the foreground even more
5. +1EV exposure to brighten the trees
6. added detail using a high pass filter
7. Color Efex pro contrast, to bring more local contrast into the photo, but then toned down with opacity at 60%
8. a little bit of overall contrast using curves

And that was all.

Here you can see the original 0EV exposure, for the camera info, please visit the original blog post.