There are many ways to add more detail to a photo. Today I’m going to show you one very popular, that can be done all just in Photoshop, without the need for any plugins at all. Of course if you have Color efex or Topaz adjust, you can use those, or any other plugin that gives similar effects. But let’s look at the Photoshop way.

This is a very easy process, so let’s get started.

1. Start by loading the photo you want to edit into Photoshop.
2. Then continue by duplicating the photo into a new layer. Just drag the background layer onto the new layer button (in the bottom right), or go under Layer/Duplicate layer. Select the new layer and change the blending mode to Vivid light.

 
3. Now still with the new layer selected, invert it. Either by hitting Ctrl+I or by going under Image/Adjustment/Invert. You will see a very grey image, but don’t worry :)
4. Next we need to apply Gaussian blur to this layer. So go under Filter/Blur/Gaussian blur and play with the radius, until you see the amount of detail you need. If you see too much halo around objects, try using a small smaller value. Hit OK to confirm.

 
5. Now we need to create a new layer, that contains all the onse we already have. Just hit Ctrl+Shift+Alt+E and it will be created for you. Select the new layer and change the blending mode to Soft light.
6. The last step we need to do, is delete the middle layer (the one set to Vivid light) as we don’t need it anymore, and it’s just in the way.

 
And thats all. I would suggest adding a mask onto the result, and just using it on the places you need it, not on the whole image. Feel free to ask if you have any questions to this :)

As it is snowing like crazy in Bratislava today, I decided to show you how I edited one of my recent snowy photos :) So let’s take a look at it.

Finished photo

Original exposure

As you can see from the original photo, I had a lot to correct. I started with Lightroom, where I changed the white balance, opened the shadows, brightened the whites, added a lot of contrast and clarity to recover detail. From there I exported the image in Photoshop and did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up):
1. Lightrom edit
2. Removed noise as I didn’t wanted to make it more visible in further edits
3. Color effex tonal contrast to get more detail, but brushed it out on the statue as that made it too dark.
4. Retouched out one huge snowflake in the left area of the photo, it just bothered me there :)
5. Color effex detail extractor, to get more detail and texture in the statue.
6. Stronger noise reduction on the statue.
7. Levels to get more pure white areas in the photo.
8. Color effex tonal contrast once more on the sky, to make the snowflakes even more visible
9. Added more overall contrast.
10. Desaturated the banners in the background.
11. Added more saturation to the text, to make it more dominant.

Lightroom tweaks

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 today, I have for you two new huge 21:9 wallpapers. This time it’s one from Bratislava and one from Dubai. You can get them as always from the wallpapers page.

From time to time one needs to process a bigger number of photos with the exact same settings. I may be a huge panorama, HDR time-lapse, or something different. In those cases, the batch processing in Photoengine can come really handy. And today I will show you how to use it.

So first thing first, you need to have all the photos you want to process ready. That means that if you have them in Lightroom, first correct any camera problems (distortions, chromatic abberations, vignetting and similar), and then export them either as tiff or jpg files depending on the quality you require. You should export everything in a single folder, with nothing else in it.

Once this is done, you can continue in Photoengine. But before choosing batch, you need to create a preset, so the program knows which adjustments to apply to the photos. For this just choose any of the series, add them to the project and click on Create tonemapped HDR project.

Now tweak the settings until you like the result. These are the settings that we will be applying to all the photos. Once satisfied, choose Add under presets. In the new window, name you preset whatever you want. Here I chosen the name Panorama, as that’s what I’m processing here. Save the preset by clicking OK.

 
Now you need to close this project, so choose File/Close. You don’t need to save the result, as we already have what we need, the preset.

To batch all the files, now choose File/Batch. In the window that opens, you have to select a few things:

1. the source directory – where Photoengine will look for the files
2. destination directory – where you want to save the results (is the same as source by default)
3. file format and quality – how the result will be saved, either jpg or tiff
4. number of exposures – how many exposures will be processed at once. In my case, it’s 5. Note that all have to have the same number of exposures, or the batch will not produce correct results
5. auto align – if PhotoEngine should try to auto align the brackets, only if you took them handheld
6. use preset – check this option, and then choose the saved preset from the list on the right

And thats all. once you confirm with OK, Photoengine will go through all the files in the folder and merge them all into tonemapped HDR files with your settings applied.

 
For panoramas I like to use the other method mostly. That is to first create the panoramas from brackets, and then merge them in PhotoEngine. But there are situations, like for instance a 360 degree panorama, where this approach, by batching all the exposures first, is much better, as Photoengine does not support 360 images, and will crate an ugly break in them.

Feel free to ask any questions if something is not explayned properly.

How the time passes. It really has been a long time since I shared some RAW brackets with you and so I’m doing that today. So here is one of my photos from last year, and here from Dropbox you can download all the RAW files I used.

 
And to make it easier for you, this is one of the photos I shown in the process posts, so you can find here, how I edited it :)

 
If any of you create your own version, feel free to share it in the community hub (the spot in the bottom left of the page :)). If you share it anywhere else, please note that I still own the copyright of this photo and mention me as the author and link back to this blog. Thank you.