Continuing with the Tuesday tradition, today I have for you another process post, showing how I edited a photos. Today I chosen a recent blue hour from Bratislava. The edits here make only small changes, as I quite liked the photo to begin with :). So lets start.

To get to this result:

I started with this photo (this is a -2EV exposure, the 0EV was just too overexposed to be used as start)

I corrected the horizon and exported the -2EV and -1EV to Photoshop, as I knew that I didn’t need the other ones. I also created a -3EV exposure by underexposing the -2EV one and also loaded that into Photoshop. I then (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. -2EV exposures
2. The created -3EV exposure to darken the castle
3. -1EV exposure to brighten the water and foreground
4. Color Efex pro contrast to add more local contrast to the photo
5. A cleanup layers, as I had to remove few dust spots
6. Curves to darken the castle even more
7. Linear contrast for the whole image
8. Added more contrast to the Basic Midtones
9. Brightened the darkest areas of the photo
10. Color efex Detail extractor on the buildings to give them more detail
11. Color balance to remove the purple color cast on the photo
12. A little more contrast
13. Color balance to make the photo more warm

And that’s all :)

As cathedrals go, the Maribor Cathedral (Church of St John the Baptist) is one of the more simpler ones. So in this photo from there, I also vent with less editing, leaving it simple, realistic, to as much as possible what I seen there :)

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

The day I took this, it started raining right around the sunset. I thought about going back to my hotel, but as I was leaving the Paris next day, I thought I wait, maybe the rain stops. So i hid under one of the bridges, and spend the next 30 minutes watching a couple playing chess there :) And not that it stopped raining after that, but at least it stopped raining enough for me to take few photos.

I tend to use my 24-70mm lens when it rains. The reasons is very simple, and I think you would see it once you see the lens hood on it. It’s just massive, and it keeps the front of the lens nice and dry.

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

Always when I edit a photo taken with the Canon 70-200mm F2.8 lens, I just cant believe how sharp it it. Al my other lenses are sharp, but this one is just crazy sharp. But I’m not complaining :) It just could be a little lighter. The first year I had that lens, I almost never used it, as I never had it with me. But now I take it every time.

Btw. how about a little editing tip :) It easily can happen, that when you use Photoengine or Photomatix, your results look less realistic. It’s very dependent on the settings you use, but the biggest reason for this is, that the light distribution is not as it should be. The results have usually everything in the same level of brightness. It just isn’t like that in reality. But there is a simple way you can make it much better. Just take the HDR result from Photoengine/Photomatix and load it into Photoshop with the original 0EV photo in separate layers. Put the original on top of the HDR and set it to 20-40% opacity. And that’s all. This will darker the areas that should be dark, and brighten the areas that should be bright. The effect is subtle, but the photo looks much more realistic after that.

I also used it for this photo. This is a HDR created from 5 exposures in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.