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Free HDR video tutorial

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Find the best ones

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Free wallpapers

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Is it really another Monday already? Looks like it is. So as almost every Monday, let’s take a look at one of my photos and how it was edited. For today I will show you this interior shot, taken in the church of the Pannonhalma Archabbey in Hungary.

So let’s first look at the final, and the starting image. As you can see, the dynamic range of the scene was quite high, from the very bright window in the back to the dark shadows around the corners. This all needed to be corrected into a dynamic range, that can be show in one photo.

From the Archabbey
From the Archabbey

 
I took 6 shots here, as I wanted a -3EV for the window. As always I started with Lightroom, where I removed lens distortions, chromatic abberations, and corrected the horizon line. I then exported all the files as 16-bit tiffs to be used in Oloneo Photoengine.

From the Archabbey
From the Archabbey

 
Here you can see the files in Oloneo Photoengine, and the result of Photoengine edit. If you would like to try this yourself, you can. Just go here to download the files (all six 16-tiff brackets I used, just resided to 2000 px wide versions) and you can get the trial of Oloneo Photoengine here.

From the Archabbey
From the Archabbey

 
I only changed the strength and contrast in Oloneo Photoengine, and maybe a little warmer white balance. From there I loaded the result into Photoshop, and I haven’t even added any of the original files, as I seen no need for them. Then I did the following edits:

1. Oloneo Photoengine result.
2. A copy of the first layer, on which I used warp to change the left side, so it more matches the right side.
3. Color Efex Detail Extractor to get more detail in the photo.
4. Imagenomic Noiseweare to remove noise from the photo
5. Color balance to make the highlight a little more warmer.
6+7. Added glow to the photo, just removed it with a brush from few areas, that were too saturated afterwards.
8. The light areas were to colorless for me, so with a soft brush, with orange color I painted them using a layer set to soft-light.
9. Color balance once more, as I felt the photo is still to purple.
10. I still wasn’t satisfied with the symmetry at the end, so once more I used warp to correct the photo even more. That’s what happens when one needs to take photos in a hurry and does not center the camera properly :)

From the Archabbey
 
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:
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behindI had this beautiful car available for a small photo-shoot today. As always it’s nice to shoot something different from time to time. Took me a long time to think of a nice (or interesting place) to go to, but in the end I remembered that there is a not very used road right under the highway close to my flat. So that’s where we went.

I took quite a few photos, so you will probably see more of them here. I regret a little that I forgot to use a polarizing filter, to try at least to remove a little of the reflection. But one learns best on ones own mistakes, so will know next time :) This photo is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop. And you can see one behind the scenes shots on the side.
BMW

Shooting in such a strong midday sun is really not ideal, but since I was in Dubai, I had to take at least few daytime shots. This one if from the Dubai Marina yacht club, and I took it quite quickly as I was warned that in this area the security guards tend to stop people with tripods. But that time, nobody stopped me :)

This is a HDR from 5 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, bust most of the finished result is from a single exposure, edited in Lightroom. I also used a polarizing filter to get the blue sky.
In the midday sun

So I though it was again time to update the wallpapers section on this blog. This time the theme for these three new wallpapers is landscape shot from Austria, and I hope you will like them :)

As always, you can choose either a 1920×1200 or 1600×1200 resolution.

Btw. all the wallpapers can also be found in this smugmug gallery in my portfolio here: www.hdrshooter.net/Wallpapers/
View from the Aggstein castle ruins 1920x1200
Hainburg an der Donau 1920x1200
Castle ruins Hinterhaus 1920x1200

400k

Statistics are not everything, but it’s always nice when one get’s to a new milestone :) And the one for today, is that my portfolio site (www.hdrshooter.net) counted for the first time over 400 000 photo views in a month. This counts almost all the photos viewed on the blog and on the portfolio :)
400k

Long exposure Dresden

Usually when the weather is just ugly, I tend to get out my ND filter, to at lease make the photos a little more interesting. It does not help with the weather, but if one blurs the water and the sky, it usually fits better the mood of the weather. I did the same with this shot from Dresden. The weather was boring, with some rain and only few clouds. But the long exposure created such a nice glass like water, great for a reflection.

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

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