The week again passed so quickly. I feel like it was Tuesday just yesterday. But as it is again Tuesday, as traditionally, there is a process post today. I chosen one of my recent photos, which was edited using manual blending. So here goes.

To get to this photo:

I started as always in Lighroom. Corrected a crooked horizon, removed chromatic aberrations and applied lens correction. After that I loaded all the brackets into Photoshop. I took 5 exposures, but in the end, I used only 3.

When I blend images, I like to start with the exposure with the best sky. The reason for this is, that the sky is the hardest to blend, and you can easily create patches of color that does not fit together. So I try to do as fewer edits there as possible. So my edits were (numbered from bottom up):

1. -1EV exposure, as I like the sky on it
2. 0EV to brighten the buildings and the middle part
3. +1EV to brighten the middle part even more
4. Color Efex pro contrast on the brighter parts of the image
5+6. Added glow to the photo. It boosts the colors and adds more contrast (more in my glow tutorial)
7. The shadows were still too dark, so I brightened them using curves
8. Color Efex detail extractor to get more detail in the clouds. I only painted the effect where I needed it.
9. Noise reduction on the sky
10. Added contrast to the Basic mid-tones
11. More vibrance on the sky.
12. Color Balance to remove a little bit of the red from the photo
13. Overall curves to add a little bit of contrast to the photo
14. Noise reduction on the water, as it still needed some
15. Added back a little bit of uniform noise to the same area, to prevent creation of color banding.

And that was it.

And here you can see the original 0EV from the camera.

Free wallpapers

If you are looking for a new wallpaper for you desktop, why not check out my wallpapers page? You can find it here.

Free copy of Onone Perfect Effects 8

I quite randomly came across this link. On this Onone special offer page, you can get a free copy of Onone Perfect Effects. Just go there and click on Get Started. Enter your name and email address and you will receive and email with the download link and the serial number. If the page does not load, just try to reload it few times. It’s probably that the server is under a very heavy load now :)

And hurry if you want it, the offer expires tomorrow.

Sun in the night sky

It would probably look even more like a sun if I retouched the lamp post away, but still, it looks a little like it :). We gout our first real snow this year, so I went out to take few photos. But unluckily, for what I wanted to try, I needed it to continue snowing, but it stopped exactly as I got to this place. Maybe next time. So instead I played with the composition here.

For this photo, I took one 30s exposure at F22 to get the nice star effect, and then blended it with another series of brackets at F5.6 from which I blended in the darker parts. It a little bit yellow, but that’s what it really looked like :)

Using Magic Lantern

Magic lantern can make taking photos so much easier. Not only when you are shooting HDR, but also for long exposures and when you need to use the intervalometer. So great to have it directly in the camera, and have no need for a special remote. It even removes the 30s limit, when you are bracketing. These really should be made standard on all cameras :). You can see more about Magic Lantern in my review of it.

The moving sky

Finally yesterday, after weeks, we had a clear sky in Bratislava. So I, with a fellow photographer Pedro Kin, went out to try and grab some star trail photos. Not even the -10 degrees stooped us. It’s funny that two hours of shooting just got me 2 finished photos to use. This is btw. my very first star trail photo I did, and I’m actually quite pleased on how it turned out :)

This photo is created from 46 exposures, each one 30s long at F2.8 and Iso 800, blended all in Photoshop. I used the Magic Lantern intervalometer function to take all the exposures. The trees in the foreground were lightened in one exposure, as we had to move the car.

POV kit review

I added reviews for almost all the gear from Peak Design I have, and few days ago I added the last one. This time its a review of the POV kit, an addition to the Capture clip. Find out more about it in the review.

More Power Xtreme

As I mentioned yesterday, I really need some new photos. So for today, I again looked back into my photo library, and chosen to edit a photo from late 2011. It’s hard to think that it is already more than two years ago :) But still, even two years later, this is one of my favorite rides. I love how it gives the feeling of weightlessness for a moment. To bad I haven’t been on one for such a long time. Who knows, maybe this year :)

This is a manual blend from 4 exposures. I used parts from two different bracket series, as I took two with the same settings.

The Photographer’s Ephemeris

Some time ago I mentioned tablet/phone app’s that I use to determine the sun position. And today I noticed that The Photographer’s Ephemeris also has a desktop version, and it’s totally free. So if you are looking for a way to determine the sun/moon position, you can give it a try. It can be downloaded on the The Photographer’s Ephemeris page.

Under the green light

I so need to plan another photo trip. And really soon. I’m running out of photos that I could edit. Of course I still have a lot of photos I haven’t posted, but not many of them I want to post. They are just not good enough. And then there are some that are great, but are similar to photo I already posted. So I also don’t want to post those :)

So wish me better weather than it is now, or a really long trip soon :) For today another older photo of the Old bridge in Bratislava. This is a HDR created in Oloneo Photoengine and finished in Photoshop.