Sale at Stuck In Customs

Now I wonder which of Trey’s tutorials I haven’t seen yet. As he is currently having a 30% end of the year sale for all his tutorials, I will probably buy the ones I’m missing. Haven’t seen the Midnight in Paris yet, so I probably get that. So for those interested, head over to the StuckInCustoms store, and if you choose something, don’t forget to use the code “YE2013” for the discount :)

And the sky opened

Sometimes you get such an amazing sky. And after all the walking up to the Durnstein Castle, I really deserved a one. The walk is horrible. Up a steep hill and all the time up a rocky road. But I think this could be a great place to shoot a timelapse from, so maybe next year :)

This is HDR from 6 shots (I took a -3EV for the sun, but as you can see it was not enough) created in Oloneo Photoengine and finished in Photoshop.

Giving credit

It really great to see that so many people liked my photo. But it’s sad that the people who posted it haven’t given a proper credit to me. It’s even more sad that they posted such a low quality version of the photo. Too bad admins of this page (and other like this) never respond to messages. They probably know that what they are doing it not completely correct. Facebook should really do a cleanup one day.

To see all the rules of sharing my photos, please check out the Licensing page.

Manfrotto Clamp Review

This was one of this years additions to my gear, after I seen my friends in Paris using it all the time. So check out my review of the Manfrotto Super clamp 035 with the 155RC head review to find out more about it.

You can also head over to my Reviews page for all my reviews on this blog.

Secret place

This is one of my favorite places to shoot in Bratislava. And I never seen anyone else there. Of course you can’t get there all the time, as the Danube is to high sometimes and also the stairs are not so visible. But once you get down here you get a great view, and you can have it for yourself. One just has to be careful, so one does not break a leg on the stones :).

This is a HDR created from 7 exposures in Oloneo Photoengine, finished in Photoshop.

Stumbleupon

Anyone from you using Stumbleupon? I’ve been using it for many years now, always when I’m in a mood for something funny, or when I need some inspiration. I recently also added a stumble button to all my posts, so it’s easier to also add my site to their database. So feel free to stumble :) And you can also find me on Stumbleupon here under my profile.

Free eBook

For those who missed it, I made an E-book for all my newsletter subscribers. You can find it very useful, especially with the upcoming new years fireworks :) So head over to the newsletter page for more information. A lot of you already downloaded it, and I hope you find the information useful. And here is a little quote about the book, I really liked :)

What a gorgeous eBook! Comprehensive and informative! The photos are so amazingly shot and processed, as is the text that frames them. The best eBook that is ever written on fireworks. Good for : Beginners and Intermediates – Vineet Suthan

Sparkling Christmas tree

I did a little photo-shooting in the Central Shopping center in Bratislava on Tuesday. It was very nice of them to give me a permit to use a tripod there. Of course I could shoot it only during their opening hours, which is not so easy. Especially before christmas, it is full of people all the time. But with a lot of photos, and long exposures, I managed to have my photos quite people free :)

This is a HDR created in Oloneo Photoengine and then finished in Photoshop.

My very first HDR

You probably can imagine how horrible it was :) And you can see it here. I found it some time ago on my hard-drive, so I thought I share it. I’m not even sure when I took it, but it was around 5-6 years ago, even before I bought my first camera (I had to borrow one to try it out). I just wanted to try it out, and I haven’t started taking photos for over a year after that. You can see in it all the classic mistakes one can do with HDR. I’m glad that my photos no longer look like that :)

Imagenomic Noiseware review

I added quite a few reviews recently, and today there will be another one. This time its Imagenomic Noiseware, currently my preferred plugin for noise reduction in Photoshop. Head over to the Noiseware review to find out more.

Cold evening with cool clouds

Sometimes even ugly weather can create an interesting sky. Same with this one from Sunday. It was cold, foggy, with a mostly clear sky. But exactly around sunset it became more interesting, and I got few shots. I was standing on one of the piers by the Eurovea Shopping center, and as it’s above the Danube, it was freaking cold there. And even bigger problem was, that the pier shakes like crazy when someone walks onto it. Luckily, it was already dark, so not many people around. But of course, once people saw me on the pier, they had to go there, even if they just got to the end and turned around. They haven’t even looked at the nice view. I always say that I don’t understand people, and I probably never will :)

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

And another week has passed, and almost another year. It feels like only yesterday I added my first processing post to the blog. And there are already so many of them. But another Tuesday, another one for you.

For today I chosen this very foggy photo from Prague, taken late at night. I used multiple applications to edit it, and I will show you all the steps I took in them. So to get this final photo, I took the following steps:

As always I started with Lightroom. I corrected the horizon line, lens distortions, chromatic aberrations and added a little noise reduction. After that I exported all the files as 16-bit tiff files.

I opened them all in Oloneo Photoengine, where only with changing the TM strength, I got this result. My next step was to load all the original files, together with the HDR into Photoshop for further edits.

In Photoshop I did the following (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. Oloneo result
2+3. I brightened the water in the 0EV exposure and blended it into the HDR photos.
4. -2EV exposure to darken few bright spots
5. A little bit of Color Efex pro contrat, to add more detail
6+7. Added more glow to the photo
8. Color Efex Darken/Lighten center to add a vignette
9. Brightened the darkest areas of the photo
10. Overall color balance, -15 in all channels
11. In this layer I removed all the people that were on the bridge
12. Added more contrast to the basic midtones
13. High pass sharpening
14. Used Color Efex tonal contrast to add more detail to the bridge

Btw. You can find my review of Color Efex here.

And that’s all. Please continue to the full post to see the original 0EV shot, or to the original post to see the camera info. Feel free to ask any questions and to share this post (or any other) further :)