Cyber Monday and Black Friday sales

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are just few days away, and as it is the best time to buy new software, I thought I share with you some interesting deals I came across. So here is the first one. For the next few days Topaz Labs has discounted the whole Topaz plugins Collection almost by 50%. It’s really worth checking out. The amount of all the available effects here is just stunning. You can find them all on the Topaz Labs site.

5000 likes

My fan page on Facebook just reached 5000 likes. Thank you very much everyone who follows me there and I hope that over time there will be many more of you :)

Color therapy

Some time ago I was thinking, how would my photos looks without structure. I mean, when you do a B&W photo, you keep the structure, but remove the colors. So what if I removed the structure and kept the colors. I just wondered what I would get. And with a little playing around in Photoshop, I got this little series of very colorful minimalist images. It’s funny that even without any subject in them, I still get a similar feeling from them, as I did from the photos they were created from. The sunset, sky, grass colors are so unmistakable, that even on their own you feel like you see the objects :)

What do you think?

Cold evening by Danube

For today I chosen for you a photo I took two weeks ago by the SNP bridge in Bratislava. The water level at this time of the year is quite low, which really allows one to get down under the bridge, so getting also all these rocks into the shot. The light was not that great, but that is normal for this time of year. Hopefully it gets a little better, as I would so like to go out and get some new photos.

This is a HDR created in Oloneo Photoengine and then blended with original exposures in Photoshop.

New newsletter

From today you can sign up for my Newsletter. I’m still in the process of creating everything for it, but I will be sending the first one very soon. I plan to send one to four every month, never more than once a week (all depending on how much new stuff I have to share with you :)).

The newsletter will include a selection from updates from the blog, whats new here and a access for all my new guides before I post them to the blog. And don’t worry, I won’t spam you :)

So for those who would like to keep in touch with my blog, feel free to sign here:

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Blue water in Dresden

I’m finally getting back to HDR after the last few days filled with editing party photos. It’s fun, but so much work. I’m so thankful for the sync function in Lightroom :) But here I have for you a photo from Dresden.

I created it by using manual blending. I had 5 exposures, but even on the +2EV the area under the bridge was black. I tried to brighten it up, but even in the RAW file the area was still dark. Strange how it got no light reflected from the water. Nest time here, I’m doing a +4EV bracket :)

Stay in touch with the blog with the HDRshooter newsletter. I promise not to spam you and never post more than one a week. This will not be a regular newsletter, I will create one every time I have enough content to share with you.

You wonder what the newsletter is about? It will include:

• Info on any upcoming events or contests on the blog
• Access to all the new guides and reviews before they are accessible on the blog
• A list of all the updates to the blog from the recent weeks
• A selection from the recent photos posted on the blog

 

Or you can check out the archive to see how it looks :)

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Free e-book for all subscribers – Capturing Fireworks

To say a big thank you to all of you who subscribe, I created an e-book on taking Fireworks photos just for you. Once you subscribe and confirm you email, you will receive a welcome email with the download link. An those of you who already are subscribers, don’t worry, the link will also be in the next edition of HDRshooter newsletter :)

The book is all about how to take fireworks photos, and here is a little preview:

Archive

Issue #1 – How to remove lens flares and much more!

A week passed and we are again at the process Tuesday post. And as I’m currently hawing the contest and raffle where you can win Oloneo Photoengine, I thought I show you a photo which I edited mostly in Oloneo Photoengine. And I’m including a special tip today :). So here goes.

I took this photo two years ago, still with a Canon 7D (my 450D that I had at that time had a broken shutter :)). That’s also why I used only three brackets, as that’s all I could take then. So as usually I started in Lightroom. I corrected the horizon here and also did a little noise reduction.

From there I exported all three brackets as 16bit Tiff files and loaded them into Oloneo Photoengine. Here I merged them and as you can see, I had to move only one slider to get the look I wanted (the TM Strength). It created a very nice blend, and also opened the shadows more that it was on the original brackets.

My next step was to load this result into photoshop. I haven’t used any original brackets here, as there was no need to blend any parts from them. I then did the following edits on it (layers numbered from bottom up):

1. the result from Oloneo Photoengine
2. I removed lens flares from the trees on the right
3. did more noise reduction
4. brightened the darkest parts of the image
5. added glow (view my glow tutorial)
6. brightened the glow
7. changed the color of the sunlight (I will explain this in a moment)
8. brigtened the overall photo with an exposure adjustment, but not in the brightest areas
9. added more contrast to the basic midtones
10. added a little contrast to the whole image

And now for the point 7, where I mentioned I changed the color of the light. A lot of times when I have a photo with the sun in it, I want to have the surrounding area to have a nice yellow/orange glow to it. Same here. The green color was nice, but I wanted more. And to get this I did the following:

• created a new layer
• filled it with 50% grey (shift+backspace and select 50% grey and confirm :))
• set the blending mode to soft ligt, this will make this layer invisible for now
• picked a color from the sun, something nice and warm
• chosen a big soft brush, with around 20% opacity and started painting around the sun, the more away from it, the less brush strokes
• just change the opacity of the layer if the effect is too strong

And that’s it. Looks really great if you need more sun glow, or if you trying to change a color of a certain part of the photo. Here is this layer from this photo, shown without the blending mode selected and at full opacity. I used it in the end at 33% opacity, and as you can see, I also deleted parts of it.

And that was all. To see the original 0EV exposure and the Oloneo Photoengine result, please continue to the full post.

Photography contest sponsored by Oloneo

The first week of my photography contest has passed and until now 90 entries have been posted overall. You still have one week to enter and have a chance to win a copy of Oloneo Photoengine. Just head over to the contest announcement here https://www.hdrshooter.com/2013/11/18/photo-contest-sponsored-by-oloneo/ and grab the source images.

And the raffle for another copy is also still running, so feel free to join there also, to have a bigger chance to win :)

The giveaway is over, the winners have been notified

At the party

I know I promised to get back to landscape shots today, but with the quantity of photos I still have to process from this weekend (three parties until the morning worth of photos :)), I just had no time for HDR. But instead, I have for you one of the photos I took during the party. And as I really like portraits, its a portrait.

This is a single image edited in Lighroom and Photoshop. I bounced the flash off the ceiling to get a nice light here.

Big thanks to Dominika for letting me share a photo of her :)