You may have noticed quite a few new photos form Bratislava recently (and even more if you follow me on Facebook). The reason is simple. I try to practice as much as I can with the new camera, so I get the basic controls into muscle memory, and can control them without even thinking about them. And for that one needs practice, more practice and even more practice :)

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 3, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones Adapter ver. IV, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 35mm, Aperture: 9, Middle exposure time: 15s, ISO: 200, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.15744, 17.14882

If you ever created a HDR image, you probably seen this problem in your photos. It’s actually also the biggest thing I don’t like about Oloneo Photoengine. But there is a simple solution :)

What I am talking about, is a visible border around the areas, where the dark and bright parts of the images are merged. There is a small darker border around the dark area, and small brighter border around the bright area. Usually this is around the horizon, where the sky ends. This may be not so visible, but once you resize and sharpen, this may become very noticeable. Here you can see how it looks, and how we will correct this in this guide.

Not everyone is bothered by this, but I am :) I like when my photos look good also when seen big. So today, I will show you how to easily get rid of this problem in few minutes.

The first thing that comes to mind, how to remove this, is just to use the Clone Stamp tool, and just carefully go around the borders, and paint them over. This works, but it’s very hard to do quickly and without errors. To make this much easier, we will use the blending modes that Photoshop allows for. This works for most cases, there just needs to be a brightness difference between the areas (if you sky is darker than the ground, this will not work that great).

1. Find the area that needs to be corrected (I will explain it on this example). Choose the Clone Stamp tool, choose a soft brush, 100% opacity and Darken blend mode. Now Alt+Click on a close part of the sky to choose the source, and start painting over the bright border. You will notice, that the bright part is painted over, but nothing else. Keep doing this, and also changing the source point, until you paint over the whole bright line.

2. Once the bright border is gone, we still need to get rid of the darker border under it. To do this, changes the blending mode to lighten, choose a source spot in the dark area, and start painting over the border again. Now, only the darker border is affected, and you will get rid of it very quickly.

3. And you end up with a photo without any outlines at all. One note, be carefull when removing the bright part around lights, as the darken mode will also darken them. Either use a smaller brush, and go slowly around it, or add a mask to your finished edit, and mask out the area of the light.

And for those lazy to read through this post (or who didn’t understood the technique completely :)) you can watch the process also in this short video I made.

Feel free to ask any questions, if something is hard to understand :)

I posted so many blue hour shots recently, so how about one taken in the middle of the day smile emoticon This one is taken in the middle of Cesky Krumlow, from this very nicely placed viewing area. You may wonder why I call this photo “Before the snow”. The reason is simple, around 1 hour after I took this, it started snowing like crazy, and the whole city got covered by snow.

This is a HDR from 4 exposures, created in Photoengine, finished in Photoshop. I used a polarizing filter while taking this photo.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 4, Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D mark II, Lens: Canon 24-70mm F2.8, Focal length: 24mm, Aperture: 11, Middle exposure time: 1/15s, ISO: 100, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.81081, 14.31720

Third reflection photo in a row :) This one is another one from the a7R. I’ve been playing around with it the last few days, and slowly I’m loosing the muscle memory I developed during the years with a Canon. With a remote in the other hand I already can get a HDR series quite quickly. Should only get better :)

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 5, Camera Model: Sony a7R + Metabones Adapter ver. IV, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 20mm, Aperture: 11, Middle exposure time: 6s, ISO: 100, Tripod used: yes, Location: 48.13704, 17.10491

I really like the photos I took of the John Frost bridge in Arnhem. The lights just make it looks so crazy at night, with all these crazy colors. And once the ships stop, the water gets so calm under it, that you have no problems getting an almost perfect reflection. It’s so nice.

This is a HDR from 4 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

Technique: Oloneo Photoengine, Number of exposures: 5, Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D mark II, Lens: Canon 16-35mm F2.8, Focal length: 18mm, Aperture: 7.1, Middle exposure time: 12s, ISO: 320, Tripod used: yes, Location: 51.97484, 5.910451