And another Monday is upon us and that means another process post. For today I chosen a manually blended photo taken in Edinburg, Scotland. So let’s take a look at it.

Here you have the final photo and the original 0EV RAW file.

 
So what I needed to correct was that few areas were to bright, few were too dark and the whole image was too cold. So I started as always, by loading the 5 exposures into Lightroom. There are corrected the lens distortion, chromatic abberations and a little noise. Then I exported all the files into Photoshop layers.

 
I then did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up):
1. -1EV exposure as the base for edits. I had better overall exposure for the sky so that’s why I chosen it as the start.
2. -2EV exposure to darken the pillars and the middle area of the sky.
3. 0EV to brighten the street and the pillars
4. +1EV to brighten the shadow areas
5. +2EV to brighten a small dark part in the photo.
6. Added contrast to the basic mid-tones
7. Added more detail using a high-pass filter
8+9. Added glow to the photo
10. Brightened the dark areas even more (I explained this step in a video I posted few days ago)
11. I wanted the pillars to have a more golden color, so using a soft light layer, I sampled a color from the back pillars and painted it onto them.
12. Changed the hue of the blue color a little toward purple.
13. Color efex pro contrast to get more local contrast and detail. I removed the effect from the sky and the highlight on the pillars.

 
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:

Is it really another Monday already? Looks like it is. So as almost every Monday, let’s take a look at one of my photos and how it was edited. For today I will show you this interior shot, taken in the church of the Pannonhalma Archabbey in Hungary.

So let’s first look at the final, and the starting image. As you can see, the dynamic range of the scene was quite high, from the very bright window in the back to the dark shadows around the corners. This all needed to be corrected into a dynamic range, that can be show in one photo.

 
I took 6 shots here, as I wanted a -3EV for the window. As always I started with Lightroom, where I removed lens distortions, chromatic abberations, and corrected the horizon line. I then exported all the files as 16-bit tiffs to be used in Oloneo Photoengine.

 
Here you can see the files in Oloneo Photoengine, and the result of Photoengine edit. If you would like to try this yourself, you can. Just go here to download the files (all six 16-tiff brackets I used, just resided to 2000 px wide versions) and you can get the trial of Oloneo Photoengine here.

 
I only changed the strength and contrast in Oloneo Photoengine, and maybe a little warmer white balance. From there I loaded the result into Photoshop, and I haven’t even added any of the original files, as I seen no need for them. Then I did the following edits:

1. Oloneo Photoengine result.
2. A copy of the first layer, on which I used warp to change the left side, so it more matches the right side.
3. Color Efex Detail Extractor to get more detail in the photo.
4. Imagenomic Noiseweare to remove noise from the photo
5. Color balance to make the highlight a little more warmer.
6+7. Added glow to the photo, just removed it with a brush from few areas, that were too saturated afterwards.
8. The light areas were to colorless for me, so with a soft brush, with orange color I painted them using a layer set to soft-light.
9. Color balance once more, as I felt the photo is still to purple.
10. I still wasn’t satisfied with the symmetry at the end, so once more I used warp to correct the photo even more. That’s what happens when one needs to take photos in a hurry and does not center the camera properly :)

 
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:

How the week passed quickly :) And since it’s Monday again, it’s time for another process post. This time it’s a vertorama, so get ready for a little longer one today. So let’s start with a look at the finished photo. It’s a shot of one of the churches in the Open Air museum in Bardejovske Kupele in Eastern Slovakia. I used a vertorama, as I wanted to have the whole church, without having a very strong distortion in the photo.

Overall I took 12 shots, 2 series of 6 brackets. In the end I didn’t use the brightest exposures. I took them as parts of the church were in a shadow, but I had no need for them. As always I started in Lightroom, where I removed lens distortion, vignetting and chromatic abberations.

 
Here you can see the original 0EV exposures

 
Then I continued in PTgui, where I created the blended planes (the whole process is described in this tutorial). I had few issues, as PTgui refused to blend the shots correctly. The repeating areas confused it, and it always created a bad transition. Even when I manually created more alignment points, it still was not properly blended. So in the end, using the masking in PTGUI, I removed most of the upper shot, to force the blend to be in a more diverse area. This really helped and I got my result. Here you can see a screenshot from PTGUI, with the mask applied. This also removed all the people from the finished panorama.

 
From there I got 5 blended planes as a result. I loaded them all into Oloneo Photoengine, to create a HDR. As usually, I only changed the strength and contrast to get to the result I wanted.

 
After that I continued into Photoshop. I loaded all the blended planes and the HDR into separate layers. I then cropped the empty areas out, and only left a little, which I could correct with retouching. Then I did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up)

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2+3+4. The sky replaced from the -1EV exposures blend. It has been brightened with an exposure layer and had saturation added to it, to fit the HDR.
5. Movement in the trees removed using the 0EV exposures
6. A merged layers, on which I removed few dust spots and corrected small missing areas, that were empty after the vertorama blending.
7. Color Efex Pro contrast filter, to get more detail and local contrast in the photo.
8+9. Color balance and Hue/Saturation to tone down the green of the grass.
10. Few more corrections from the +1Ev exposure, to tone down the colors of the walls.
11+12. More overall contrast to the whole photo
13. TK actions saturation mask, used to tone down oversaturated ares.
14. A little bit noise reduction on the photo.

Here you can see the screenshot from Photoshop, and also a screenshot of the saturation mask.

 
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:

And we came to another Monday, and as every Monday, let’s take a look at the process of another photo. For today I chosen a photo taken late night, of the Burj Al Arab, with the Burj Khalifa tower in the back. So let’s start.

First, here is a look at the final and the original image. The biggest difference is the addition of much more detail and contrast. That’s what was really missing in the original exposure.

I used 4 exposures for this photo which I merged in Oloneo Photoengine. Looking back at them, I would probably got the same result just by editing the -1EV and then just blending the others as I did here, but that does not really madder. The process is not so important, and most things can be done in more than one way anyway.

So here you can see the original 4 exposures, corrected in Lightroom (chromatic abberations and lens distortions) and the result from Oloneo Photoengine (medium strength, a little contrast and natural mode)

From there I loaded everything into Photoshop and did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up)
1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2. -1EV to correct the very strong lights on the buildings
3. -2EV a little more correction to the very strong light on top of the Burj Al Arab
4. +1EV to correct the top even more, as it looked strange after darkening
5. Color Efex Pro contrast, to get much more local and overall contrast in the photo.
6. -2EV once more, as the Color Efex Pro contrast created few very bright areas in the buildings.
7. Color Efex Tonal contrast, applied to the buildings in the background, to get more details and contrast in them
8+9. Added more overall contrast using curves. I could have done that only using one curves layer, but what I like to do, is to use the presets that curves have, as that gives me more even result. And when one is not enough, I just duplicate the layer.

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:

And were reached another Monday, and as every (almost) Monday, it’s time for another process post. For today I chosen to show you this rainy photo from my last years visit to Paris, so let’g get to it.

Let first take a look at the finished photo and the original 0EV exposure. As you see, the original is too bright, lacks detail and contrast, and has completely boring color. All that needs to be fixed.

 
I started with 5 exposures in Lightroom. I corrected the lens distortions, chromatic abberations, white balance and the horizon line. Here you can see all the 5 exposures and the middle one already corrected.

 
I then exported all the files as 16-bit tiffs and loaded into Oloneo Photoengine. Actually I loaded them twice. First time only the first 4, to create a darker version, second time all 5 to create a brighter version. In both versions I used the same settings. Quite often I leave the brightest version out of Photoengine, as it can create a too bright result. Same here, but I still used the too bright result later in Photoshop. I could have done the same with one of the original exposures, but the Photoengine result has a better contrast and detail already, so lees work later on is needed.

 
After this I loaded both results and the original exposures into Photoshop and continued from there (layers numbered from bottom up):
1. the darker Oloneo Photoengine result
2. the lighter Oloneo Photoengine result, used to brighten the darkest areas
3. used the -1ev exposure, to town down the lights (there were just too saturated in the HDR) and to correct ghosting from moving cars and ship
4. few more bright spots darkened using the -2EV shot
5. Color Efex Pro contrast filter to add more detail to the sky, the water and the building on the right
6. Tk Actions saturation mask, to tone down the yellow lights even more
7+8. Color balance adjustment to get a different color feel to the photo. They are both the same, just the second one has a smaller opacity, with which I tweaked the look.
9. merged layer with noise reduction
10. little desaturation on the blue color channel
11. added overall contrast. Almost every photo I edit, ends with a little overall contrast added. This is because the sharpening for web after the re-sizing, removes a little 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: