Sale at Stuck In Customs

Now I wonder which of Trey’s tutorials I haven’t seen yet. As he is currently having a 30% end of the year sale for all his tutorials, I will probably buy the ones I’m missing. Haven’t seen the Midnight in Paris yet, so I probably get that. So for those interested, head over to the StuckInCustoms store, and if you choose something, don’t forget to use the code “YE2013” for the discount :)

And the sky opened

Sometimes you get such an amazing sky. And after all the walking up to the Durnstein Castle, I really deserved a one. The walk is horrible. Up a steep hill and all the time up a rocky road. But I think this could be a great place to shoot a timelapse from, so maybe next year :)

This is HDR from 6 shots (I took a -3EV for the sun, but as you can see it was not enough) created in Oloneo Photoengine and finished in Photoshop.

Another week just passed, and again I’m getting to another process post. So as always I will show you how I edited one of my recent photos. For today I chosen this photo from Austria, from this stunning sunset at the Neusidler see. So to get to this final photo, I did the following

As always I started in Lightroom, where I corrected the lens distortion and removed Chromatic aberrations. After that I exported all the files as 16bit Tiff files.

Then I took them and loaded in Photomatix Pro 5. I used the Contrast Optimizer to get a nice even image, a good start for additional blending.

After that I loaded the Photomatix result together with the original exposures into layers in Photoshop, and continues as follows (layers numbered from bottom up):
1. Photomatix result
2. recovered detail in the water from the 0EV exposure
3. recovered detail in the sky from the -1EV exposure
4. brightened the pillars from the +2EV exposure
5. used Color Efex Pro Contrast to add more color and contrast to the photo

6+7. added glow (view my glow tutorial for details)
8. color balance to make the photo a little warmer
9. used Color Efex Glamour glow to soften the colors a little
10. used Color Efex Detail extractor, to get more detail in the sky and water
11. used Color Efex Darken/Lighten Center to add a vignette. This should have been the last point, but in the end I did few more edits on the photo.
12. curves to add more contrast
13. a little more Color Efex Pro contrast, as I felt the photo needed more local contrast
14. noise reduction using Imagenomic Noiseware
15. added more color to the sunset
16. finished with a little more contrast

Not maybe the nicest use of layers, but it got me to the finished photo. Please continue to the full post to see the original 0EV shot and the Photomatix result.

Imagenomic Black Friday sale

I found another great Black Friday deal for you. Imagenomic is runing a 30% discount on all their products. I personally love their Noiseware pro plugin, as it the best noise reduction plugin I have tried. I’ve been using it for quite a long time now. For further details head over to the Noiseware page on the Imagenomic site, just if you like it, don’t forget to use the code “THANKU2013” for the 30% discount. This offer is valid until tomorrow. And while you there, don’t forget to check out also their other plugins.

Purple sky around the Lighthouse

I just could not decide what to edit for today. I started to edit 6 different photos, but I didn’t like anything I created. In the end I went with a sure thing. All my photos from this lighthouse look so great, so editing any of them will create something I like. So here it is, a lovely sunset shots from the Neusidler see.

This is a manual blend from 5 shots.

New wallpapers

I liked my recent photos with the lighthouse so much, that I thought I will add them to the wallpaper section of this blog. And so here they are. I hope you will like them as I do, and maybe some of you will use them :)

In the middle of the day

When I started taking photos, most of my shots were taken in the middle of the day. But now, as more I shoot, I almost never take any photos at that time, and rather focus on sunrise, sunset and blue hours. But that’s not always possible, as sometime you are at a great spot during the day, and you just can’t miss the opportunity to take some photos. Same here, on the Hinterhaus castle ruins. A spot that I need to revisit again, but next time for the sunset :)

This is a HDR created in Photomatix, and then blended with original exposures in Photoshop.

Photomatix Pro 5

For those who missed it, HDRshoft released a new version of Photomatix Pro recently. Photomatix is one of the most popular HDR software available, and the new version brings few new algorithms to combine photos. I’ve been trying them out recently and they really bring Photomatix more towards the realistically looking results, which I think is great.

For those who already bought the Photomatix 4.0 or later, the upgrade is free, for those who are new to Photomatix, you can get the trial version on their download site. And if you want to buy it, don’t forget to use the code “HDRSHOOTER” for a 15% discount.

To see more about how to use Photomatix, feel free to check out my HDR tutorial.

Crazy skies

I had to check the original RAW few time to be sure that the sky was really like that and I made no error in the processing. But the clouds were really this crazy. They were broken up into small pieces and stripes and with the long exposures I needed, it created this. Still this was one stunning sunset.

I edited this with the new Photomatix Pro 5, with the new Contrast Optimizer algorithm. It gave me a nice even image to start my further edits from. I of course replaced most of the sky and the water from the original exposures, as combining removed all the details from there. After that I finished the image in Photoshop.