For this Monday, I selected a little easier edit I did on one of the photos I took at the Schwarzsee under Matterhorn. It’s a state holiday in Slovakia today, so why not something easier. So let’s get started.

First, lest’s look at the finished and the original photo.

Finished photo

Original exposure

It looked not so bad to start with, but I still wanted to recover more from the sky and the reflection in the water. So I took 5 exposures and in Lightroom I corrected the horizon line, and lens problems.

All exposures

Lightroom tweaks

From there I continued into Oloneo Photoengine. There I only changed the strength and added contrast. As I mentioned before, I very rarely change anything else here. It’s just not needed. After that I only took the Photoengine result into Photoshop to edit further (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2+3. Added glow to the photo, as I wanted the bright areas to shine a little more (check out my glow tutorial here)
4. Color efex pro contrast to add more local contrast to the photo and more detail
5. Curves to add a little more contrast to the photo
6. I ended up loading the 0EV here, to recover few areas, where the process created too saturated colors, mostly in the foreground.

Combined 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:

These are the exact clouds I like to have in my photos. Big, white and fluffy. The HDR process usually makes them more great, but that’s one of the first things I always correct. I usually just take the +1Ev exposure and blend them from it.

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

How about one of my more typical photos today :) Of course it’s a bridge. Today it’s the Margaret bridge in Budapest. If you ever been there, this bridge is quite unique, as it had three ends instead of two. It not only connects the two banks of Danube, but also connects the island in the middle.

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

When I took this shot, I really like the formation the clouds took. It really reminded me, as if I was looking at a huge spider from above, with all the legs. What do you think? Does it look like one? :)

This is a HDR from 4 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine and finished in Photoshop. Taken at the Kuchajda lake in Bratislava

Few days ago, I ordered a new 34 inch 21:9 monitor (which I’m still waiting for :)), as a nice upgrade to my 24 inch I’m working on right now. I will post more about it, once I have it, as I think it will change the way I work with Photoshop and Lightroom quite a lot. But until then, how about few wallpapers, already sized for a monitor that big.

So if you already have a 21:9 screen, you may like one of these wallpapers :) Of course you can find more on the wallpapers page.

The all new ones are in a 3440×1440 resolution, so big enough for a 34 inch screen, or anything smaller than that.