For today’s process post, I chosen one of my new year’s fireworks shots. But before I start, just a little reminder, that if you would like a free eBook about how I shoot and edit fireworks shots, you just need to subscribe to my newsletter.

But let’s start, this is the photo will be looking at:

This was a single RAW edit, and the photo looke like this from the camera:

I started as always in Lightroom. As this was a single RAW edit, I did much more than I usually do. I corrected the lens distortion, toned down the higlights, added a lot of contrast and vibrance. I also corrected the horizon and cropped the image. After the edits it looked like this:

I then continued to export three versions of it. One normal, one underexposed and one overexposed. I loaded them all into Photoshop and continued with the blending. My main goal was to add more contrast and detail into the image, and to brighten the foreground. So I did the following (layers numbered from bottom up):
1. normal exposure as start
2. overexposed version to brighten the foreground
3. added contrast to the basic mid-tones (the photo was very flat)
4. Color efex Pro contrast to get more local contrast to the image
5. darkened down the dark’s of the image, to still add more contrast
6. underexposed version to darken the highlights of the image (castle and fireworks)
7. little bit of contrast, just on the fireworks
8. the overexposed version once more, as the foreground got to dark due to the edits
9. more contrast overall
10. desaturated a little the oversaturated colors (mask created using TK actions)
11. still more darkening of the dark areas
12. Color efex Tonal contrast to get more definition into the sky

And that was all. As you can see, most of the edits were just to get the contrast right.

Waiting for the Narrative clip

Sometimes waiting for something can be so long. Like this one. I’m waiting for my life-blogging camera, the Narrative clip, almost for a year now. And it should have been here today, but will be tomorrow. So I planed to post some un-boxing photos and more info today, but will do it on Wednesday (as tomorrow is time for another processing post :)) so don’t forget to visit the blog.

Purple everywhere

I read somewhere that the purple color is much more preferred by women than by man. Not sure if that is true, but in any way, I hope you all enjoy this photo. Even when it’s purple everywhere. It’s quite interesting how sometime the blue looking clouds, together with the yellow glow of the sun can create such colors.

This is a HDR created in Oloneo Photoengine, and then blended with the original exposures in Photoshop.

Taking photos at the same spots can get quite repetitive. One tends to see the same compositions and it’s sometimes hard to find a new one. So for this classic view, I though to use a little bit of framing. And I also wanted to cover up the boring sky, so it worked out quite nicely :) I actually behave quite stupid here. I seen the composition, but then I walked across the snow. And I really wanted no footsteps there. So I had to find a new spot with the same view.

This is a manual blend from 4 photos. I took 10 in two series of 5, one focused on the castle, one on the tree. I then blended only those I needed.

Somehow I was busy the whole day today. But still I managed to get some time to edit a new photo. Today its one form Dresden. Dresden is a really lovely city, just a little busy during the day. And as I wasn’t staying there, I had no chance to go and shoot the sunrise, and sunset was nothing special. It even started raining right after that.

This is a HDR created in Oloneo Photoengine and blended with original exposures in Photoshop.

Planing my first trip for this year

As I mentioned few posts ago, I need to plan some trips for this year. And just today, I started planing the first bigger one, as I bought a ticket to Dubai :). I still have to wait a month before I go there, but I already can’t wait. It will be 7 days filled with photos, photos and more photos :)

A little bit of snow by the river

I like to tone my photos more towards the blue, but I really liked this soft yellow/red cast this one had, so I let it be. I could even make this shots from a single exposure, but in the end I used there. I’m just so used to blending, that it’s sometimes easier to do it, than to get more from a single photo. And blending usually results in less noise anyway.

This is a blend from three exposures, created in Photoshop.