As plugins go, this one creates a very particular effect. I think you all have seen photos, where the lights or the sun look like starts. This can be usually achieved in the camera, by using a smaller aperture. But what if you don’t get the look you wanted, or you had to use a bigger aperture, as you needed a shorter exposure time. In that case, this plugin can help you.

Topaz Star Effects will create a star from any bright area in you photo. You can specify the look, color, brightness, opacity and many more. You can also brush it only on the places you want it to be applied, or have it applied based on the strength of the light. It also can create a light glow, or a sun flare.

There are many presets, but I find the they create just to strong of an effect. They are good for a start, but you will probably go and change the settings right away.

Overall I like the look of the starts, even if I don’t tend to use them. If you need this kind of effects in your work (maybe you are creating and add for diamonds and you want to add few sparkles here and there) or you just like the look, I suggest you try it out.

For additional information please visit the Topaz Star Effects site. And if you want to buy it, between the December 10th and December 31st 2013, you can use the code “decstar” for a 50% discount.

View all my other reviews here.

Last day of the giveaway

Tomorrow is the last day you can join my Oloneo Photoengine giveaway, so if you have not yet joined, this is your last chance. You can find it on the contest page. It’s also the last day to vote for you favorites in the editing contest, so head over to the contest album and give a like to your favorites.

Nik Analog Efex Review

To continue my additions of reviews to this blog, there is a new review of the Nik Analog Efex Pro plugin. This is the latest addition to the Nik plugin collection, and one to give you that popular vintage look.

Castle an the bridge

The Bratislava castle is a very dominant landmark in Bratislava. You can see it from so many spots. But it also is hard to come up with a new view, I haven’t used before. But this time I found one. I went to the Port bridge, and took a photo with my longest lens. I was hoping for a nice reflection of the bridge in the Danube, but as it was a quite windy day, I had no luck with that. But that only means that I will have to revisit the spot :)

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

First issue of HDRshooter newletter

Yesterday I send out the very first issue of the HDRshooter newsletter. I hope it will be the firs one of many to come :) If you are curious, you can see it here: HDRshooter Newsletter Issue #1

The newsletter won’t be are regular one, as I will create a new one only when I have enough new stuff to put in it. If you like it, and want to stay in touch with the blog, feel free to subscribe. I promise not to spam you, and the newsletter will always include a links to guides, not yet published on the blog :)

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Nik Silver Efex Pro review

I have again added a new review to this blog. This time it is a one of the Silver Efex Pro plugin by NIK. So check it out to see what is this plugin about and if it’s something you might use in your post-processing.

Sunset riders

This is a statue called the Mythical ship in Bratislava, next to River park. I wanted a photo like this for a longer time, and yesterday, thank you a coincidence (the spot I wanted to go for sunset was not accessible) I got it. The sunsets the whole last week were just beautiful, full of purple and pink colors. Too bat its over, with today’s weather being a snowstorm.

This photo was such a pain to edit. As with all photos with very high differences in bright and dark areas, I had a huge problem getting rid of the halos around the statue. I tried first to blend them using Oloneo and Photomatix, but in the end I had to do it all manually. I actually thought of retouching the supports out of the photo, so having it just floating in the air, but that wouldn’t look so real after that :)

Flares are one of those things that can add to a photo, but usually you don’t want them. Especially if you are doing a nice landscape shot, flares can completely destroy your photo. There are multiple ways of avoiding them and removing them, so lets take a look at those.

Avoiding lens flares

The best approach is to avoid lens flares in the start. This is not always possible, but few simple steps will help you.

1. Use a lens hood – even if you think you don’t need it. Lens hoods are specially designed to block stray light getting into you lens. And that’s exactly the light you need to avoid. Also when you are doing night photography, a lens hood can help you avoid stray light from street lamps and similar sources.

2. Be aware of the suns position – when shooting landscapes, you should always take into account where the sun is. If its anywhere else than behind you, check for lens flares. You will not see them through the viewfinder, but they will be visible in live view. You can even take a test shot, to check for them.

3. Don’t use filters you don’t need – this is especially true for UV filter. These filters can create much more flares, than you would have without them

4. Get a better lens – I know this is not cheap, and should not be your first approach, but better lenses catch much fewer lens flares than the budget ones. They have special coatings that prevent this.

Removing them using Photoshop tools

If you didn’t managed to avoid them, and you don’t like to have them in your photo, you can remove them in Photoshop. Photoshop has many tools for photo retouching and some of them can also work on Lens flares. The most useful are Patch tool, Healing brush tool and Content aware fill. In a way, they all work the same, you just select the area you want to replaced and then either move it over a clean area (Patch tool), Fill it using content aware fill (Shift + Backspace and select content aware fill) or you paint over using the Healing brush. This works well only in some cases, having a flare over a very detailed part of the image can cause problems in retouching.

Here you see an example of this. I used the Patch tool to select the flare and drag it over the area to the right. Don’t worry, you don’t have to be absolutely accurate, because with the size of photos, any error you leave will be only visible at 100%, so not even if you print the photo.

Blocking the sun

An advanced approach to dealing with lens flares, is to prepare for their removal right during the photo shot. This works for photos taken from a tripod, not so well for handheld shots. What you need to do, is shade the sun with your hand (or something dark) if its to the side of you camera, while taking the shot. If the sun is in your shot, than take two shots, one normal and one with your hand in front of the sun. This two should have the same settings, as you will need to merge them later. This works best if you are in Manual mode. Here you see an example of two such shots:

These you can then load into separate layers into Photoshop and easily using layer mask (check my tutorial on those here) correct the problem. Be careful with the color cast, as the shaded photo can be a little colder than the one with the sun. This can happen even if both photos have the same white balance and it  has to be corrected.

If you are doing a HDR bracket series, you do the same, you just take one series normally and one series with your hand in front of the lens. You usually need only one photo with the shaded sun, It just hared to say which one, so its better to take the whole series. Here you can see a sample series of this:

After that you continue as before, jut merge the normal exposures as you want (Oloneo, Photomatix, Manual blending) and then repair the lens flares from the shaded shot.

And here you can see the finished photo, nice and flare free :)

I prefer the third method, which gets all my photos flare free. I hope you find this guide useful, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

And here you have a video where I go through all of this together in one spot :)