There are few tutorial videos here and there on the blog, but since they are scattered all over the place, I thought I put together a page will all of them in one place. So here they are:

How to take multiple exposures

In this video I explain all the different ways how one can take multiple brackets. From AEB, to Magic lantern and Promote remote.

How to use Magic lantern for HDR

In this video I show how Magic lantern works and how to take multiple brackets for HDR with it.

Adding glow to a photo

In this video I show how to add glow to a photo.

Brighten/darken parts of a photo using Luminance masks

In this video I show how to use Luminance selections/masks to brighten or darken parts of a photo, without loosing the contrast.

 
For more, feel free to check out my video tutorial series Master exposure blending here:

As every Monday, it’s time for a new Before/After processing post. For today I chosen a little more compolicated photo to show you, so this post will include a lot of images. So let’s get started :)

First let’s take a loot at the final photo and the 0Ev raw file I started with. Today it’s a photo of the Dubai fountain.

 
As you can see, in the original 0EV there was no fountain. That’s because I taken a separate series of 6 exposures, when the fountain was off, to get the background, and then a long series of shots exposed for the fountain, to blend in. So here you can see the 6 exposures, and the huge amount of the fountain shots.

 
From the 6 exposures, I created a HDR in Oloneo photoengine, as my base. I then selected three additional photos, two for the fountain, and one for the people in the foreground. You can see on the photos, that I tweaked them in Lightroom, so they better fit into the Oloneo Photoengine result.

 
And here you can see which parts from those photo I ended up using. This are the layers from the final HDR, numbers 4, 5 and 6 in the list bellow. Btw, you probably noticed, that there are nice shots of the fountain I haven’t used, but they are planed for another edit of this photo :)

 
So I loaded all the original exposures, the Oloneo Photoengine result and the three additional photos into Photoshop layers, and continued with following edits (numbered from bottom up):

1. Olone Photoengine result
2. -2EV to darken few bright light in the distance
3. 0EV to correct a little ghosting in few trees
4+5+6. Blended in parts of the fountain and the people in the foreground (as seen in the screenshots above)
7. Noise reduction for the whole photo except for the sky, so no color banding is created.
8+9. Added contrast to the whole photo.
10. Color balance to give the photo a little more cooler, bluish look.
11+12. Added glow (check out my tutorial on this)
13. Brightened the dark areas, as they got too dark after the glow was added (check out my video on this)
14. Removed few unwanted objects in the foreground.

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:

Continuing with the Budapest theme, as that’s the only place I took photos in the last month :). Today, it’s a shot of the stairs leading up to the Fisherman’s bastion. I actually tried this shot a year ago, but was not happy with the result. So I tried it again this time, and I’m still not sure if I’m happy with the result, but it’s much better that last time :). It was of course taken early in the morning, right before sunrise, as it’s the only time one can have the area free of people.

I’m including a behind the scenes photo, even that it’s not so good. It’s hard to get a nice photo in the dark with a phone, even with my Lumia 1520, that has a great camera :)

This is a HDR from 4 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

Of course while in Budapest I took also few other photos, not just the firework ones. But thanks to the weather I was not able to take many, as it was raining a lot. But luckily, few hours before the fireworks, it stopped raining, and started only few hours after. Usually I have worse luck with weather, so it was nice for a change :)

So for today, I have for you a photo of the Margareth bridge. I managed to stop by it the only evening I had. It’s one of those bridges, that are just so horrible to edit in photos. Yellow lights combined with a yellow bridge, just make for a bad combination. But it still looks nice :)

This is a manual blend from 5 exposures, combined with a HDR created in Oloneo Photoengine.

As you probably expected, another fireworks photo for today. I have taken quite a few I want to edit and share with you :) The fireworks this year in Budapest were really stunning, and I think quite different that the ones from last year. They just were a little problematic to capture in photos, as they created a lot of smoke, and were not consistent. What I mean, they changed a lot between very bright and not so bright explosions. So I had to change the camera settings very often, and it was very hard to get a nice exposure. But luckily, the RAW files can get a lot of info, and can correct for a lot :)

Same with this photo. It would be probably better with a little shorter exposure time, as it ended up being quite busy, but I still like it. It’s a single exposure edited in Lightroom, Oloneo Photoengine and Photoshop.

I’m also including a behind the scenes photo, so you can see where I was standing while taking this. It was actually in the middle of a hill, so I had to be very careful not to just roll down :)