Hope you all had a nice Monday, and as almost every Monday, I’m going to show you how I edited one of my photos. For today I chosen this one from London, from the Westminster bridge to be exact. So let’s take a look.

For this photo I didn’t want to do any drastic edits, so I chosen to use manual blending. I wanted to add more contrast and color, and also make it a little warmer.

Finished photo

Original photo

First I did few tweaks in Lightroom. I changed the white balance and removed the lens distortion. I also added a little vibrance. From there I loaded all the exposures into Photoshop layers.

All exposures

Lightroom tweaks

First in Photoshop I had to deal with the distortion. Here I used the Perspective crop tool to cut away parts from the top left and right corners, until I got a straingt image. Then I did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. I started with the -1 exposure, as there I liked the sky the most
2. Corrected the highlits from the -2 exposure.
3. Brightened the dark parts form the 0 exposure.
4. Brightened the deep shadows from the +1 exposures. I haven’t used the +2 in the end.
5. A little contrast to the Basic midtones
6+7. Added glow to the photo
8. Color Efex Pro contrast to get more local contrast and detail into the photo
9. I did’t like how the light from the lamp transitioned into the sky, so I created a blured copy of the photo and blended parts of it in, to create a nicer glow.
10. Noise reduction for the sky.
11. Little more contrast to the Basic midtones
12. Brightening and contrast to the Dark areas of the photo.
13. Little more overall contrast.

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:

For today I chosen one of the more straightforward edits I did recently. As always, first the finished and the original 0EV exposure. As you can see, I needed only to get detail in the shadows and get the colors I wanted.

Finished photo

Original photo

I started as usual in Lightroom, correcting the chromatic aberrations, lens distortion and the horizon line.

All exposures

Lightroom edit

I synced the settings and exported all files as 16-bitt Tiffs to be loaded into Oloneo Photoengine. There I only changed the strength and contrast and saved the result. In Photoshop I then did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2. +1EV exposure, to recover the colors as the combined image was too red
3. Color balance to tone down the red even more
4. Color Efex Dfine for noise reduction
5. I still felt the image was too red, so I pushed the red hue a little more towards orange
6. Color Efex Pro Darken/Lighten center to create a vignette

Photoengine edit

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:

For this Monday, I chosen a little more complicated photos from Dubai. Not only did I used two series for this one, but I also replaced parts from the image to get a better symmetry. But lets get started :)

Let’s take a look at the final and the original exposure. You can see I changed the colors a lot, and also the crop and the distortion.

Finished photo

Original photo

I started as always in Lightroom. I used two series with the same settings, but one focused on the city in the background and one on the foreground concrete. I did this so I had both in focus. Just stepping down the aperture would not work, as this was an extreme DOF. I corrected the lens distortion and synced the settings to all the exposures. I left the corner as it is, as I didn’t want to crop that much away, and I knew I could fill that in in Photoshop.

All exposures

Lightroom edit

From here I exported them all and merged both series in Oloneo Photoengine. I used the same settings for both, so I can easily blend them together later. AFter that I continued in Photoshop (layers numbered from bottom up):
1. Oloneo Photoengine result, exposures focused on the foreground.
2. Copy of the left part of the first layer, flipped and then manually painted into the image, to create a better symmetry, but still keeping a different texture, so it’s not so obvious :)
3. Oloneo Photoengine results, exposures focused on the background. Masked out the whole foreground concrete from it.
4. Corrected the sky using content aware fill.
5. Corrected the highlights using the -1EV exposure.
6. Still few more highlights to correct from the -2EV exposure.
7. Color Efex Skylight filter, to get more color into the photo.
8. Color Efex Detail Extractor, to get more detail in the foreground, and a little bit in the city.
9. Noise reduction using Imagenomic noiseware.
10. Color Efex Cross processing, to shift the color of the city more towards the blue.
11. More contrast to the city.
12. A little bit more of retouching, as there appeared a little glow around the foreground. I just used the Clone stamp tool to darken it a little down.

Oloneo merge

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:

So my crazy weekend is over, 4 night of taking photos at parties and also some during the day :) Haven’t slept much, but I need to quickly get back to my normal routine, so how about to start today. So as always, a new process post today for you.

Let’s first look at the final photo, and the starting exposure.

Finished photo

Original exposure

As always I loaded all the exposures into Lightroom, where I corrected the horizon, white balance and also chromatic aberrations. From there I exported all the files and loaded them in Oloneo Photoengine. I changes the strength and the contrast to get a blend I wanted and continued in Photoshop.

All exposures

Lightroom twaks

I loaded all the exposures in Photoshop and did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up):
1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2. I created a second result in Oloneo Photoengine, a brighter one. Here I used a lights luminosity mask to brighten all the white parts of the water.
3. Original exposure, to correct the moving people on the bridge
4. Brushed out the railing as it didn’t fit the composition I wanted.
5. Color Effex polarization, to bring more blue into the sky
6. Color Effex Pro contrast to get more detail
7. I added more overall saturation here, as I felt there is not that much color in the photos
8. Nik Dfine to remove noise
9. Brightened the bottom right corner, as it looked too dark
10. Little bit of overall contrast

Oloneo Photoengine

Photoshop

And that’s all what I did with this photo :)

For this Monday, I selected a little easier edit I did on one of the photos I took at the Schwarzsee under Matterhorn. It’s a state holiday in Slovakia today, so why not something easier. So let’s get started.

First, lest’s look at the finished and the original photo.

Finished photo

Original exposure

It looked not so bad to start with, but I still wanted to recover more from the sky and the reflection in the water. So I took 5 exposures and in Lightroom I corrected the horizon line, and lens problems.

All exposures

Lightroom tweaks

From there I continued into Oloneo Photoengine. There I only changed the strength and added contrast. As I mentioned before, I very rarely change anything else here. It’s just not needed. After that I only took the Photoengine result into Photoshop to edit further (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2+3. Added glow to the photo, as I wanted the bright areas to shine a little more (check out my glow tutorial here)
4. Color efex pro contrast to add more local contrast to the photo and more detail
5. Curves to add a little more contrast to the photo
6. I ended up loading the 0EV here, to recover few areas, where the process created too saturated colors, mostly in the foreground.

Combined in Oloneo

Finished in Photoshop

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: