Let’s look at how one of my recent photos was edited. Today I will show you this night shot with star trails, I took few weeks ago in Vienna. So let’s start.

Finished photo

Original photo

For this photo I took over 200 exposures. First I took two hours worth of 30s shots for the stars. As the Sony a7R does not have an intervalometer in it, what I did was, I set the camera to continuous shooting and locked in the shutter button on the remote. It worked without any issues. For each of these photos, I corrected the lens distortion, chromatic aberations and white ballance in Lightroom.

Exposures for Star trails

Corrected in Lightroom

I also took 3 additional exposures, each with shorter times, for all the lights in the scene. I did the same corrections in Lightroom on them as for all the other photos.

Exposures for HDR

Corrected in Lightroom

I exported all as tiff files, and started with creating the star trails. As loading them all at once would probably kill my computer, I loaded them in 20 image stacks, where I only changed all to lighten blend mode and flattened them into one layer. While doing that, I also masked out few parts from the right, as there was the setting moon and it created a little glow.

From there I blended in the darker exposures to correct the few lights and removed the few people that were in the shot. To get the final look, I corrected out the fisheye distortion, added Color efex detail extractor and Pro contrast to make the stars more visible. I finished the edit with more saturation in the blue, and overall contrast.

Blended star trails

Finished 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:

I’ve been neglecting the process posts recently. The reason is simple, they take longer to put together, and I’ve been a little busier with other stuff. But let’s look at one of my recent photos, and how it was edited :)

This photo is from Arnhem in Netherlands, and is one of my very few photos taken with a fish eye lens.

Finished photo

Original photo

As you can see from the finished to original comparison, the 0EV exposure was quite dark. This was mostly due to very strong light of the bridge, and the camera of course compensated for that. Additionally, it was a little more distorted than I liked.

So as usually I started with all the exposures in Lightroom. Here I only partially removed the lens distortion and removed the chromatic aberations. From here I continued in Oloneo Photoengine.

All exposures

Tweaked in Lightroom

Right here you can see how different the image looked only with few tweak in Photoengine. I still needed to correct few things, so I loaded the result and all the original exposures into Photoshop. First I cropped the image, to get rid of most of the visible parts of the lens in the corners. Then I did the following edits:

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2. +2EV exposure, to brighten few areas around the horizon.
3. -2EV exposure, to darken the light on the bridge and the oversaturated green
4. merged copy, on which I retouched out the rest of the visible parts of the lens
5. brightened the ship from the +1EV
6. brightened the lights from the +2EV, to make them more visible
7. darkened the bridge pillar as it was too bright in the HDR, here I replaced it from the 0EV exposure
8. little bit of Color Efex Pro Contrast, to get more definition in the photo
9. little bit of Color Efex Tonal Contrast, to get more local contrast between objects in the photo
10. recovered few bright spot (result of Color Efex) from the -1EV exposure
11. once again repaired the bright light on the pillar from the -2EV

Merged 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:

There was no process post last week, as I was away, but let’s get back to one this week. Today I will show you how I edited this night photo from Vienna, so let’s get to it :)

This was taken on a quite cold, rainy evening in the city, so as you can see from the original photo, everything just looked yellow. So thats was one of the main problems I had to correct. I also wanted to create more separation between the bridge, the water and the sky.

Finished photo

Original photo

I started in Lightroom, where I did my basic tweaks, like removed chormatic abberations, cropped the image and then also corrected the white balance for a cooler photo. Then I continued in Oloneo Photoengine. I just changed the strength and contrast. Nothing else. That how easy it is usually there :)

All exposures, tweaked in Lightroom

Merged in Oloneo Photoengine

From there I continued in Photoshop, where I did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. Oloneo result
2. Copy of layer 1, on which I removed the lens flare visible on the sky and on the bridge
3. -2EV exposure to darken the lights in the middle of the bridge
4. Darkened the bottom border from the -1EV exposure, as it was too bright after the merge
5. Hue/saturation, to tweak the light color under the bridge, which looked too red. Moved it more towards yellow.
6. Another Hue/saturation to tweak the light of the bridge, that looked too green. Moved them more towards yellow.
7. Brightened few dark spots from the +2Ev exposure.
8. I found one more spot in the water, which I removed on this merged copy.
9. Brightened the lights from the -1EV exposure.
10. Color efex Tonal contrast to add more detail into the water.
11. Added a little 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:

Welcome to a new week, and as almost every week, let’s start with a new process post. For today I chosen a fireworks shot, so this will be a editing of a single exposure. So let’s take a look at it.

As with most of my fireworks photos, I like to push them into a single color, where the overall color of the photo aligns with the most dominant fireworks color. For this shot it was quite easy to choose, as it was already quite red. So my goal here was to make it even more red. Other than that, I wanted to recover detail from the tree ans the sky, and add more contrast to the fireworks. Lastly, I wanted to recover some of the highlight on the parliament.

Finished photo

Original photo

I started in Lightroom. There I cropped away part of the photo, removed lens distortion and chromatic aberrations. Then I exported one version of the photo, recovered the highlight and exported a second copy of the photo.

Lightroom tweaks

Photoengine edit

The first copy I loaded into Oloneo Photoengine, and changed the strength and contrast. Like this I got an evenly exposed photo, which was just very colorful. But my plan was not to use the whole photo anyway, as I wanted to mask in parts of the original exposure. So I loaded the Photoengine result with both of my exported exposures into layers in Photoshop, and I continued form there (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2. First export, from which I corrected the very colorful areas. I left only the trees and the fireworks untouched.
3. Second export, from which I corrected the parliament buildign
4. Color effex Pro contrast, with which I recovered more detail in the foreground
5. Color effex Tonal contrast to get more contrast in the fireworks
6. Copy of the 5th layers, just set to luminosity, to get even more contrast in few areas.
7. Noise reduction for the trees in the bottom left corner.
8+9. Toned down the highlights on the parliament by using curves and luminosity masks.
10. Brightened the white parts of the fireworks to make them more visible
11. Added a little overall contrast
12. I still was not happy with the amount of contrast in the explosion, so I added a little using Detail Extractor in Color Effex.

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:

There was no process post last week, but there will be one today. And I will show you how I edited this long exposure shot of the SNP bridge in Bratislava. I took this photo using a 10 stop ND lens, so that changed the look quite a bit. But I still have to tweak a lot of things, so let’s look at exactly what I did.

Finished photo

Original photo

I started in Lightroom with 5 exposures. I could have done the same with less, as most of the image is quite uniform, but I tend to take more just to be sure I have enough. In Lightroom I corrected the lens distortion, chromatic abberations, and tweaked the white balance, to get a much warmer feel to the photo. From there I exported everything into Photoengine.

Used exposures

Lightroom tweaks

I didn’t did much in Photoengine. All I needed is to adjust the strength and the contrast to get to where I wanted to be with this photo. Then I just loaded it into Photoshop and continued from there (layers numbered from bottom up):
1. Olonoe Photoengine result
2. I removed dust spots and the visible part of a ship from the photo
3. Removed the cables visible in the bottom part of the image (normally I would move the camera to avoid them, but it was not possible here)
4. Removed few visible people on the bridge.
5. Brightened the inside part of the bridge a little from the +2EV exposure
6+7. Corrected a waving flag from the -2EV exposure, which I brightened using curves
8. Color Efex Briliance/Warmith to add more color to the sunset
9. Color Efex Pro contrast to add more local contrast to most of the photo
10. Removed a little noise from the sky
11. Brightened the windows on the building, to have it look more shiny
12. Added more overall contrast
13. Added more saturation on the blues, for the sky and the water reflection

If you seen my other process posts, you will notice that I almost always end with adding more contrast. The reason is, that sharpening a photo will remove a little contrast, and I prepare the photo for that.

Merged in Photoengine

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: