For today I chosen to show you how I edited this photo from the Grand Mosques in Abu Dhabi. This was the main entrance area, so quite busy. That why I chosen this compositin, trying to look more up, so getting a shot over everyone heads. It was also a scene with quite a high dynamic range, so I used 6 exposures, with a -3EV taken for the lights.

So lets look at the final image and the original 0EV exposure.

Finished photo

Original 0EV exposure

I started as always in Ligthroom. I corrected the lens distortion, removed the chromatic aberrations and corrected the angle. After that I exported all the files as 16-bit tiff files and loaded them into Oloneo Photoengine.

All exposures taken

Distortion corrected in Lightroom 

In Oloneo I just changed the strength and contrast, as I do most of the time. From there I loaded the HDR result and the original exposures into Photoshop, and did the following edits (layers numbered from bottom up):
1. Photoengine result
2.-3EV exposure to darken the lights
3. Curves to brighten the overall image
4. Just a merged layer I needed for Color efex plugin
5. Color efex Detail extractor, to get more detail from the photo. Set to default settings and then 50% opacity.
6. Curve to darken the brightest lists in the photo.
7. Merged layer for noise reuduction
8+9. Added contrast to the whole image
10+11. Desaturated the red color and added more saturation to yellow.
12. Color balance for the shadow areas to remove the red cast.

HDR in Oloneo Potoengine

Photoshop editing

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:

Photoshop really scared me for a moment, when it crashed while I was editing this photo. It’s been perfectly stable for so long now (I still use CS6, as I feel the CC version is slower) and this was only the second crash I can remember. If you are curious, the first one was when I tried to edit a 200+ Mpix panorama :). But as it has been so stable for so long, I always forget to save files regularly. Luckily, Photoshop does, and after the recovery I only was missing a single curves layer.

But to the photo, this is taken at the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, right around the sunset. The sun was shining form the right, as is still visible on the pillars. That’s why I also left the colors a little warmer, to fit more with the light that was at that time. This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine and finished in Photoshop.

The Grand Mosque is really beautiful from outside, and also from inside. It’s quite strange walking around without any shoes one, but the carpet insides is not just beautiful, but also very comfortable. I have to give them also big thumbs up for allowing tripods, even inside :) Something a lot of other places can learn from.

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop. I’m not completely sure about the colors here. As I was there late in the evening, there ware already light on outside, inside and also the decorative neon lights. This mix of different light, cold and warm at the same time, is really not so great when on tries to capture what one saw. At least the details look great :)

IFTTT

I just recently started using IFTTT and it’s looks quite useful. Especially to automate some thing around the social networks. For those who don’t know, IFTTT (ifttt.com) is a service where you can automate different tasks around different services. I personally set up few for now, like automatically post my instagram photos to twitter, or my flickr uploads to tumblr, so all the staff I always do anyway, and this makes them easier.

I just haven’t found a way to post to twitter, so it generates the hashtags for me. Not sure if it’s even possible :) Any of you use IFTTT? Any tips for good recipes there?

Lost in the reflection

I look for reflections everywhere, and the small pools around the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi are perfect for those. In some the water moves a little, so making it a little harder to get a nice reflection, but some are completely still.

There was a crazy high dynamic range in this photo. I even took 7 exposures, and still the brightest photo was not bright enough. And the very hard transition between bright and very dark areas make the editing quite difficult. It’s very easy to get a lot of haloing or a very hard transition between the two. But somehow I got almost the look I wanted :) Hope you like it :)

This is a HDR from 7 exposures created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

White and HDR does not go well together that much, but when you have such a great structure like the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi, you just do your best. In this photo I tried to keep the brightness and white color of the wall, and give them a nice contrast to the blue hour in the background. And I think it worked out quite nicely :)

This is a HDR from 5 exposures created in Oloneo Photoengine, but most of the photo was blended back from one of the exposures.