I’m very sad to see that one of my favourite photo locations in Prague was destroyed yesterday. The John Lennon wall was a continually changing gratify wall for few decades, as a protest to government in Czech republic. And I don’t even like gratify, but there is a moment when gratify can become art and also a piece of history. And now, this wall was completely painted white by students. This is very sad, not only that they destroyed a historic landmark, but also but the lack of talent and creativity they shown. This is just lazy vandalism, nothing else.

To see how the wall looks now, check out this post in Czech news. Here you have one of my photos I took of the wall last year, as a memory of this landmark. .

For this Monday, I selected a little easier edit I did on one of the photos I took at the Schwarzsee under Matterhorn. It’s a state holiday in Slovakia today, so why not something easier. So let’s get started.

First, lest’s look at the finished and the original photo.

Finished photo

Original exposure

It looked not so bad to start with, but I still wanted to recover more from the sky and the reflection in the water. So I took 5 exposures and in Lightroom I corrected the horizon line, and lens problems.

All exposures

Lightroom tweaks

From there I continued into Oloneo Photoengine. There I only changed the strength and added contrast. As I mentioned before, I very rarely change anything else here. It’s just not needed. After that I only took the Photoengine result into Photoshop to edit further (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2+3. Added glow to the photo, as I wanted the bright areas to shine a little more (check out my glow tutorial here)
4. Color efex pro contrast to add more local contrast to the photo and more detail
5. Curves to add a little more contrast to the photo
6. I ended up loading the 0EV here, to recover few areas, where the process created too saturated colors, mostly in the foreground.

Combined in Oloneo

Finished in Photoshop

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:

These are the exact clouds I like to have in my photos. Big, white and fluffy. The HDR process usually makes them more great, but that’s one of the first things I always correct. I usually just take the +1Ev exposure and blend them from it.

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

How about one of my more typical photos today :) Of course it’s a bridge. Today it’s the Margaret bridge in Budapest. If you ever been there, this bridge is quite unique, as it had three ends instead of two. It not only connects the two banks of Danube, but also connects the island in the middle.

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

When I took this shot, I really like the formation the clouds took. It really reminded me, as if I was looking at a huge spider from above, with all the legs. What do you think? Does it look like one? :)

This is a HDR from 4 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine and finished in Photoshop. Taken at the Kuchajda lake in Bratislava