Continuing with the Tuesday tradition, today I have for you another process post, showing how I edited a photos. Today I chosen a recent blue hour from Bratislava. The edits here make only small changes, as I quite liked the photo to begin with :). So lets start.

To get to this result:

I started with this photo (this is a -2EV exposure, the 0EV was just too overexposed to be used as start)

I corrected the horizon and exported the -2EV and -1EV to Photoshop, as I knew that I didn’t need the other ones. I also created a -3EV exposure by underexposing the -2EV one and also loaded that into Photoshop. I then (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. -2EV exposures
2. The created -3EV exposure to darken the castle
3. -1EV exposure to brighten the water and foreground
4. Color Efex pro contrast to add more local contrast to the photo
5. A cleanup layers, as I had to remove few dust spots
6. Curves to darken the castle even more
7. Linear contrast for the whole image
8. Added more contrast to the Basic Midtones
9. Brightened the darkest areas of the photo
10. Color efex Detail extractor on the buildings to give them more detail
11. Color balance to remove the purple color cast on the photo
12. A little more contrast
13. Color balance to make the photo more warm

And that’s all :)

As cathedrals go, the Maribor Cathedral (Church of St John the Baptist) is one of the more simpler ones. So in this photo from there, I also vent with less editing, leaving it simple, realistic, to as much as possible what I seen there :)

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

The day I took this, it started raining right around the sunset. I thought about going back to my hotel, but as I was leaving the Paris next day, I thought I wait, maybe the rain stops. So i hid under one of the bridges, and spend the next 30 minutes watching a couple playing chess there :) And not that it stopped raining after that, but at least it stopped raining enough for me to take few photos.

I tend to use my 24-70mm lens when it rains. The reasons is very simple, and I think you would see it once you see the lens hood on it. It’s just massive, and it keeps the front of the lens nice and dry.

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