As every Monday, also this one I’m sharing with you another processing post. For today I chosen a photo from Paris, of the Eiffel tower, taken from the Tour Montparnasse. So let’s start.

As always here is first a look at the finished and the starting image. As you can see, I didn’t need that much to change, as the photo was quite alright already from the start. It just needed more detail, contrast, and few tweaks here and there.

Finished photo

Original photo

For this photo, I took 5 exposures, but I didn’t need all of them. In the end I just used two. I think I mentioned it in my Oloneo Photoengine tips, that if one does not need exposures, one should not use them. More exposures will just lead to more ghosting and a less sharper image.

All 5 exposures

Editing in Oloneo Photoengine

So I continued by few tweaks in Lightroom, removed chromatic aberations and corrected the horizon line. I then exported the two exposures I needed and opened them in Oloneo Photoengine. There I created two versions, one for the city (natural mode on) and one for the sky (natural mode off). I could have of course use also a different approach, like manual blend, but this is what I did :)

1st Photoengine result

2nd Photoengine result

From there I loaded these two versions and the -1EV image into Photoshop. There I did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up)

1. 1st Oloneo Photoengine result
2. 2nd Oloneo Photoengine resutls, masked out to only show the sky and the tower
3. -1EV exposure, to correct a little ghosting of the cars in the foreground
4. Retouched out the light streak that was on the bottom of the photo.
5. Noise reduction using Imagenomic Noiseware.
6. Added more overall contrast
7. Added more contrast to the buildings in the distance, to make them more dominant
8. Removed a little color from the tower by using the 1st Oloneo result
9. Color efex Pro contrast to add a little more detail to the city (but I ended changing the opacity of the layer to 25% :))

 
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:

Since last I was traveling last week, there was no processing post. But since now I’m back home, let’s get back to them. For today I chosen a fireworks photo from Budapest, I posted not so long ago. It’s a single exposure, so a little different than most of the Before/after posts. And if you want to know more about how to take fireworks shots, check out my free eBook Capturing Fireworks. So lets get started :)

So first let’s look at the final and the starting photo. As you can see that the original was not so colorful, but just by changing the white balance, one can archive a color cast, that can really help the photo.

Final result

Original photo

From this photo, I created two version in Lightroom. The first one was to be used as input for Oloneo Photoengine, so I only cropped the image, removed a little noise and chromatic abberations. The second one, was to be used in blending in Photoshop, for the very bright fireworks. So for that one, I brightened also the darks, and darkened the highlights.

Oloneo Photoengine start

Lightroom edit

 
I then edited the one exposure in Oloneo Photoengine, adjusting just the strength and contrast. I then loaded it, together with both of the Lightroom edits into Photoshop and did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2. The second Lightroom edit, from which I painted in the fireworks
3. The first Lightroom edit (the Oloneo input), from which I painted in the parliament
4. Merged layer, on which I removed few dust spots, and the tree in the corner.
5. Noise reduction on most of the photo.
6. Color Efex Tonal contrast filter, to get more contrast and detail into some parts of the photo, mostly the smoke from the fireworks.
7. Toned down the yellow color a little
8. A little overall contrast to the photo. I usually end with this, as the re-sizing and sharpening removes a little contrast.

Oloneo Photoengine result

Photoshop screenshot

 
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 Monday, so let’s get to another before/after process post. For today I chosen this photo of Dubai Marina (which you see every-time you visit this blog :) ), so let’s first take a lot at the finished, and the starting photo.

 
As you can see from the original photo, I could have probably gone even without HDR, but that’s just not what I do :). So what I needed to correct few areas, and overall color.

So I started as always, in Lightroom, correcting lens distortion, the crooked horizon and chromatic aberrations. Then I continued into Oloneo Photoengine, where I combined the exposures.

 
AFter that I contineud in Photoshop. Loading the Photoengine result, together with the original exposures. There I did the following edits (layers numbered form bottom up)

1. Photoengine result
2. -2EV exposure, to darken the strong highlight in the photo
3+4+5. -1EV, 0EV and +1EV exposures, to correct the ghosting from the moving cars
6. I expanded the photo a little one the top and filled it with the sky. This is so the buildings don’t touch the edge of the photo.
7. Merged version with few spots retouched, for instance, I got a little bit of the skyscraper I was on in the corner, which I didn’t like there.
8. Added contrast to the photo
9. First color balance to try and remove the overall purple hue.
10. De-saturated a little the yellow colors, mostly visible on the streets.
11. Second color balance to tweak highlights a little.
12. Changed the hue for the very strong neon lights in the front
13. I usually don’t use the chanel mixer, but the colors were still to purple, so a little less blue and more green in the red chanel helped here.
14. A little more overall desaturation of the blue colors.
15. And to finish a little brightening of the dark areas, using curves and a luminosity selection.

 
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:

As every Monday, today’s post will be again about one of my photos, and how it was edited. For today I chosen a photo from the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, so let’s take a look at it.

First here you have the final and the original photo. As you can see the difference between the bright and the dark areas in this one, was just huge.

So for this one, I had to take a little more exposures. As you can see I took 7, but I managed to take them a little more to the darker side than I wanted. But still I got enough information to work with. First I loaded them all into Lightroom, where I corrected the distortion, white balance and removed the chromatic aberrations.

 
From there I exported all the files as 16-bitt tiff files and combined them in Oloneo Photoengine. As it usually is, with white walls and very high dynamic range, the result was not the best, so it needed to be edited a lot more in Photoshop. So I loaded all the original exposures and the Photoengine result into Photoshop and continued from there. (Layers numbered from bottom up)

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2. +2EV exposure, set to Lighten mode and 37% opacity, to recover the white parts of the image
3. 0EV exposure, set to Lighten, to brighten few more spots.
4. +2EV again, with a hand painted mask, to remove the ghosting from the reflection in the water. As the water was not completely still, there was a little movement between photos.
5. Merged layer, to remove few spots from the photo.
6. +1Ev exposure, with a hand painted mask, to recover parts of the center (they lost some contrast in the HDR merge)
7. Color Efex pro contrast, to get more detail in the photo
8-9. Added glow to the photo, to make the bright areas shine more
10. Color balance to make the photo a little warmer
11. A little more contrast to the shadow areas, to make them a little darker, as the photo looked too artificial.

And here you can see the Oloneo Photoengine result and a screenshot from 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:

As every Monday, it’s time for a new Before/After processing post. For today I chosen a little more compolicated photo to show you, so this post will include a lot of images. So let’s get started :)

First let’s take a loot at the final photo and the 0Ev raw file I started with. Today it’s a photo of the Dubai fountain.

 
As you can see, in the original 0EV there was no fountain. That’s because I taken a separate series of 6 exposures, when the fountain was off, to get the background, and then a long series of shots exposed for the fountain, to blend in. So here you can see the 6 exposures, and the huge amount of the fountain shots.

 
From the 6 exposures, I created a HDR in Oloneo photoengine, as my base. I then selected three additional photos, two for the fountain, and one for the people in the foreground. You can see on the photos, that I tweaked them in Lightroom, so they better fit into the Oloneo Photoengine result.

 
And here you can see which parts from those photo I ended up using. This are the layers from the final HDR, numbers 4, 5 and 6 in the list bellow. Btw, you probably noticed, that there are nice shots of the fountain I haven’t used, but they are planed for another edit of this photo :)

 
So I loaded all the original exposures, the Oloneo Photoengine result and the three additional photos into Photoshop layers, and continued with following edits (numbered from bottom up):

1. Olone Photoengine result
2. -2EV to darken few bright light in the distance
3. 0EV to correct a little ghosting in few trees
4+5+6. Blended in parts of the fountain and the people in the foreground (as seen in the screenshots above)
7. Noise reduction for the whole photo except for the sky, so no color banding is created.
8+9. Added contrast to the whole photo.
10. Color balance to give the photo a little more cooler, bluish look.
11+12. Added glow (check out my tutorial on this)
13. Brightened the dark areas, as they got too dark after the glow was added (check out my video on this)
14. Removed few unwanted objects in the foreground.

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: