And a bonus one from the most viewed series. Tomorrow I’m back, so it should be again back to standard posts (if I’m not completely dead tired :))
Hoya ND400 filter – review
For those interested in a neutral density filter, I have put together a short review of the one I use, the Hoya ND400 9-stop ND filter. You can find the review here, or you can find all my reviews on the Reviews page.
Winter’s day in Bojnice
Where is the snow? That I was in Bojnice in December, was just a coincidence, as we stopped there on the way back to Bratislava. But if there was snow, this could look so as from a fairy tale. Like in Frozen :)
Still this photo is a little less colorful than my other photos, but every time I added more saturation, it felt fake. I try to give a photo a look of what I have seen, and it just didn’t feel right. This is a manual blend in Photoshop from 5 exposures, using luminance and painted masks.
Today I have for you another photo process post. This photo of the Bojnice castle is one of the most popular photos I ever posted, so I think the way I edited it would be interesting to you. So to get to this final image:
I used luminance mask to combine the shots. To be exact I did the following steps (layers numbered from bottom up)
1. original 0EV exposure
2-3. -1EV and -2EV exposure to darken the sky and other bright spots
4-5. +1EV and +2EV exposure to brighten the foreground
6. -1EV exposure once more to recovel some lost contrast from the blending
7. added contrast to basic midtones
8. added detail using high pass layer
9. darkened and added contrast to the brighterst parts of the image
10. added more local contrast using the Color efex Tonal contrst preset
11. added more contrst using the Color Efex Pro contrast preset
12. removed noise in the foreground elements
13-14. added glow using a blured layer
15. additional brightening for dark areas
To see the original 0EV exposure, please continue to the full post
A little more colorful photo today. I went with more saturation and glow for this one, to get the feel I wanted. But it depends a lot on the screen you are viewing the photo on. It looks completely different on my screen, my tablet or my phone (I have to say, the amoled on my phone looks just incredible :)). And it also looks different based on the light conditions and on what you were looking before on (if you look on something saturated before and then look at it, it will look really washed out :)). So having the exact color I want is really not that simple, or even possible.
This is a manual blend form 3 shots, taken next to the Bojnice castle in Bojnice.
