For today I prepared another addition to my processing post series. Today we will take a look at a photo I took in the Grand Mosque in Abu Dhabi. It really is a grand majestic place, just the white wall create a little challenge when editing. But lets take a look at it.

The final photo I created looked like this:

I started with 5 exposures, which I loaded into Lightroom. Here you can see the 0EV exposure:

As you can see, the white balance was totally off. I set it for a shot I took before this one, and forgot to change it (that’s why one should always shoot in RAW :)). So in Lightroom I corrected the white balance, removed the chromatic abberation, cropped the image and corrected the lens distortion.

I then exported all the files as 16-bit Tiff files and loaded them into Oloneo Photoengine. After tweaking the strength and contrast, I got quite an even result.

I then loaded all the original exposures and the Photoengine result into Photoshop layers and continued from there. The Photoengine result looked quite ok, but it was not what I wanted. A very classic problem with HDR was visible here, all the white walls just looked grey. My goal in editing was to make them white and shining like the real building. As the walls in the mosque are quite reflective, I wanted to show all the light reflection from them. So in the Photoshop, I did the following (layers numbered from bottom up) :

1. Oloneo Photoengine result
2. +1EV exposure, set to Lighten blending mode. This mode makes this layer replace all the bottom layer pixels, which are darker
3. +2EV exposure, set to Lighten blending mode but only at 40% opacity. I also removed the brightest parts with a layer mask. With this I got the wall looking very bright (exactly as I wanted :))
4. a copy of the HDR Photoengine result, set to soft light. I brushed in only parts, to restore the texture in the floor
5. merged layer, with a strong noise reduction applied to it. Layer mask used to have the effect only on the sky.
6. merged layer, in which I retouched out all the people in the background
7. one more merge where I corrected few areas where the lights were bleeding into the blue sky
8. added linear contrast to the whole photo
9. added saturation to the yellow channel, to make the gold ornaments more prominent
10. color balance to make the whole photo warmer

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:

Funny thing, that immediately after one returns from any city, one gets great ideas on composition. I know I missed so many views in Dubai, even on the spots I visited. Strange that I coul never think about them when I was there. Could be because of the heat :)

This is another view of the Dubai Marina, taken from the Palm Jumeirah. This is a HDR from 3 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

I remember when I started with photography, seeing photos like this one and just not understanding how it was taken. The view from the lens I had (18-200mm) just never looked like that. Of course than I got a nice wide angle lens (10-20 at that time) and I understood immediately. Until one tries one out, one will never understand the difference few mm of focal length can make. The view is just do different.

For this shot I went with the 16mm focal length (of course on a full frame sensor :)). One can get quite an interesting view, by lowering the camera down and pointing it up. This is a HDR from 7 exposures, created in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop. Photo taken in the Hungarian state opera in Budapest.

I still plan to go to Prague this year, but since I still haven’t done so, here is a rainy photo from my last visit there. This is the Wenceslas Square right before sunrise. I was surprised how many people were there so early in the morning, but I think for them it was still late at night :)

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

I think I mentioned it before, but there are many neon lights in Dubai. They really use them a lot to decorate their buildings. They look nice, but make the capturing and editing of photos a little more difficult.

Same with this photo fo the Dubai Festival city. It actually should not be as purple as it is, but my white balance was set for a nearby bridge (completely lit up by neon lights) and it created this color. And as I really like it, as it’s something different from the blue shots, I let it be.

This is a manual blend from 4 exposures, taken around 1am at night :)