And we have another Monday here, so another processing post. But before I start, I would like to remind you that tomorrow is the last day to join my video tutorial giveaway. Don’t forget to do that if you haven’t done so yet :)

But let’s get back to the photo. For today I chosen this blue hour photo of the Charles bridge in Prague. Of course the Charles bridge is always busy, but from this square, right next to it, it does not looks to that much. So let’s take a lot at the final ant the original 0EV exposure first.

 
As you can see on the original one, it really lacks a proper white balance, contrast, and some spots are too dark or too bright. So I started the same way as I always do. Loaded all the photos into Lightroom for first tweaks.

 
On the tweaked image you can see what everything I changed. I corrected the horizon and white ballance. I applied the lens correction and removed chromatic abberations. I then exported all the layers into Photoshop and continued from there (layers numbered from bottom up)

1. 0EV exposure
2. -1EV exposure from which I darkened the bright spots of the photo
3. -2EV exposure to darken them even more
4. +2EV exposure to brighten the foreground area and the bridge

This finished the blending stage, as you can see on this screenshot.

 

5. merged layer, with motion blue applied to it from which I masked the water, giving it a more softer feel
6. added more contrast to the midtones of the photo
7+8. added glow to the photo (check out my tutorial on how to do it)
9. Color Efex Pro contrast filter, to get more local contrast in the photo
10. Added more structure using the high pass filter
11. Brightened the darkest areas a little
12. Added a little bit of 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:

And we came again to another Monday, so it’s time for another before/after processing post. And since I posted more fireworks shots in the last weeks, we take a look at one of those :)

But before we start, let me remind you, that you can download a free eBook on capturing firework photos from here.

So lets start with the photo. As it’s a fireworks shot, it was created from a single exposure. Here you can see the final edit and the original RAW photo.

I first started in Lightroom, where I removed the chromatic abberations, noise and brightened the shadows a little and darkened the highlights. From there I exported the photo as 16-bit tiff and opened in Oloneo Photoengine. There using the strength slider, I opened the shadows even more, and added contrast. Here you can see the Lightroom and Oloneo results (please note that the Oloneo result already has the lens corrections applied in Photoshop on it).

As always I continued in Photoshop. I loaded the Oloneo Photoengine result there, did a perspective crop and did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up)
1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2. Color balance, as the photo was too purple.
3. Color effex Pro contrast filter to get more detail from the photo.
4. A very strong noise reduction, applied to the corner areas, as brightening the shadow areas resulted in too much noise.
5. Added more structure using the high pass filter, but just to the fireworks and the buildings.
6. Added more overall contrast.
7. Even more contrast, but just to the fireworks.
8. Warmed up parts of the photo.

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 another week passed very quickly and it’s time for another process post. For today I chosen a photo from a beautiful sunset by a lighthouse in Austria. So let’s take a look at the finished photo first

I really wanted to show the warmth and glow of the sun in this one, and I edited it accordingly. For this I started with 6 exposures. I normally do less, but since this was shoot into the sun, I wanted to be safe, that I have enough.

Where the 0EV looked like this:

As always I started with Lightroom. I corrected the white balance, lens distortion and chromatic aberrations. I also added some vibrance and noise reduction.

I chosen manual blend fro this photo (I usually first try Oloneo photoengine, just for a quick text how the HDR would look, if I don’t like it, I go with manual blend). I exported all the 6 exposures into Photoshop, and did the following edits on it (layers numbered from bottom up)

1. -2EV exposures. I started with a darker one, as I don’t like to blend the sky
2. -1EV exposure, brightened the dark parts of the photo using a luminosity mask
3. 0EV exposure, brightened the dark parts of the photo using a luminosity mask even more
4. Color efex Pro contrast filter, to add more local contrast to the photo
5+6. I wanted more glow and color in the photo, so I added glow to it (check out my tutorial on how to do it)
7. Created a vibrance mask using the TK actions and added more color to the photo.
8. Brightened the very dark areas using a curves layer.
9. Added more structure using a high pass filter layer.

Normally I would have ended here, but I left the photo for a while, and when I returned, I felt that it’s not finished yet. So I did few more edits:

10. Brightened few shadow spots from the +2EV exposure
11. Color effex glamour glow filter on most of the photo
12. Brightened just the lighthouse from the +2EV exposure. The lighthouse is white, and it didn’t look that way in the photo.
13. I felt the photo still being too dark, so using exposure I brightened everything except the sunset sky
14. Added linear contrast using curves
15. Color effex tonal contrast filter applied on a new layer, but the layer set to luminosity (so it does not affect the colors) and brushed where I wanted to have the additional tonal contrast.
16. Color effex darken/lighten center filter to add a vignette to the photo.
17. A little more saturation to the bottom right shadowy area.

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 got to another post in my processing series. For today I have chosen a photo taken at night from the Burj Khalifa. So let’s take a look at it.

To get this final photo

I started with 4 exposures in Lightroom. I could have taken the usual 5, but as you can see, I had no need for it.

Here you can see the original 0EV exposure.

In Lightroom I corrected the horizon line, white balance, chromatic abberations, noise and tweaked a little the shadows and vibrance.

Then I exported all the exposures as 16-bit Tiff files and opened them in Oloneo Photoengine. Changing the strength and contrast, I got this result.

As you can see, it lacks a little contrast, there are reflections visible (the photo was taken through a glass wall) and some areas are still too bright. I loaded the Oloneo result and the original exposures into Photoshop, and did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up)

1. Oloneo result
2+3. 0EV exposure, darkened by one stop with a painted mask, to remove all the ghosting from teh HDR merge
4. -1EV exposure with a painted mask, to darken the bottom center area
5. few spots darkened from the -2EV exposure
6. merged layers on which I removed the reflection visible in the sky
7. Color Efex Pro contrast to get more local contrast in the photo
8. added more overall contrast
9. added more detail, by using the high pass filter
10+11. there were few bright areas after the pro contrast filter, so I corrected those from the -1EV and -2EV exposure
12. added a little more overall contrast
13. removed the glow in the top right corner, I just didn’t like it there

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 prepared another addition to my processing post series. Today we will take a look at a photo I took in the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. It really is a grand majestic place, just the white wall create a little challenge when editing. But lets take a look at it.

The final photo I created looked like this:

I started with 5 exposures, which I loaded into Lightroom. Here you can see the 0EV exposure:

As you can see, the white balance was totally off. I set it for a shot I took before this one, and forgot to change it (that’s why one should always shoot in RAW :)). So in Lightroom I corrected the white balance, removed the chromatic abberation, cropped the image and corrected the lens distortion.

I then exported all the files as 16-bit Tiff files and loaded them into Oloneo Photoengine. After tweaking the strength and contrast, I got quite an even result.

I then loaded all the original exposures and the Photoengine result into Photoshop layers and continued from there. The Photoengine result looked quite ok, but it was not what I wanted. A very classic problem with HDR was visible here, all the white walls just looked grey. My goal in editing was to make them white and shining like the real building. As the walls in the mosque are quite reflective, I wanted to show all the light reflection from them. So in the Photoshop, I did the following (layers numbered from bottom up) :

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2. +1EV exposure, set to Lighten blending mode. This mode makes this layer replace all the bottom layer pixels, which are darker
3. +2EV exposure, set to Lighten blending mode but only at 40% opacity. I also removed the brightest parts with a layer mask. With this I got the wall looking very bright (exactly as I wanted :))
4. a copy of the HDR Photoengine result, set to soft light. I brushed in only parts, to restore the texture in the floor
5. merged layer, with a strong noise reduction applied to it. Layer mask used to have the effect only on the sky.
6. merged layer, in which I retouched out all the people in the background
7. one more merge where I corrected few areas where the lights were bleeding into the blue sky
8. added linear contrast to the whole photo
9. added saturation to the yellow channel, to make the gold ornaments more prominent
10. color balance to make the whole photo warmer

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: