To bad the weather forecast is never accurate. The forecast for the days I spend in Ljubljana promised nice sunny weather with some clouds. And just day before the trip, the forecast changed into cloudy with rain. At least they were off on the rain. But the sky was cloudy all the time (check the photo on the right, I took it during the day with my phone). So I did what I always do in such a case. I do all my photo shooting in the evening and even more in the early morning. Even if there is no nice evening blue hour, you usually get a good one in the morning.

Same with this photo, taken around 6am. Even with the cloudy sky, it got a nice blue color, exactly what I wanted :)

This is a HDR created from 5 shots in Oloneo Photoengine, taken in the center of Ljubljana, Slovenia.

It’s nice to see, when they change a building into something else, they still keep a part of the old one. Same with this hotel. It used to be a bank before that, and they left the vault as a part of the cafe :) Interesting place to have a break :)

This is a manual blend from three shots. Taken in the Boscolo hotel in Prague.

I’m still quite tired, as I arrived late at night from Slovenia, but of course I can’t let a day pass without a new edited photo. So this is the first one from the trip, one taken by the Old bridge in Maribor. When I was setting up for this shot, I didn’t take into account the fountains, as I had no idea they were there. They turned on somewhere in the middle of my exposures and were a very nice surprise

This is a manual blend from 5 shots.

Sometime today I should be back home, so hopefully from tomorrow there will be some new photos from Slovenia here (I’m writing this few days before, as I don’t carry a pc with me when I travel). So until then, here is another photo from London.

This is a manual blend from 5 shots combined with HDR created in Oloneo Photoengine (I used parts of the buildings from the HDR)

Another Tuesday, another process post. Today I chosen one where I did only a little edit, as I liked the photo quite a lot.

So to get this final photo:

I fist imported the photos into Lightroom, cropped the image and corrected the white balance. Then I exported all the files into layers in Photoshop. There I did the following edits (numbered from bottom up)

1. 0EV exposure
2+3. -1EV and -2EV exposure to darken the middle part of the photo
4+5. +1EV and +2EV exposure to brighten the bricks of the tunel
6. added detail using the high pass filter
7. added contrast to the basic mid-tones (mask created using TK actions)
8. color balance for the center part, as it was too blue
9. curves adjustment for the center part, as it needed more contrast
10. added glow (check out my glow tutorial)

and that’s all. As you see, not every image needs a ton of layers :)
Continue to the full post to see the original 0EV exposure.