Post-processing Wednesday: Catedral de la Almudena

Time for another post in my Post-processing Wednesday series. For more posts from this series go here.

In this case Before photo is 0 EV photo without any adjustments and After image is finished image after using Photomatix Pro 5 and Photoshop CC.

Try it yourself!

Starting today I will occassionally share my source images for you to try. They aren't RAWs (just to protect my copyright a little bit) and are downscaled to 2048 x 1365 pixels but you should still be able to play with them.

Here are the images.

If you do process those images, make sure to share your results in the comments on my blog. I'd be very interested in learning how you edited them!

One tip: the images were taken hand-held, so make sure to use alignment in your HDR tool.

About source images

Today photo was taken in Catedral de la Almudena in Madrid, Spain. I shot this image hand-held using very high ISO (3200) as I wanted it to be proof of concept for the post that high ISO is no longer a bad thing.

You can read more about the image itself in the mentioned post.

As you can see in the Before photo above, shadow areas are almost completely black lacking any detail. Highlights look generally quite ok with the exception of the altar which is a bit overexposed. So to solve both issues I decided to capture HDR image and for that purpose I took 3 exposures at 2.0 EV spacing.

You can see all exposures below. Starting from top-left they are: middle-exposure, under-exposed photo and over-exposed photo:

Darkest exposure (-2 EV) have all lights correctly exposed and brightest one (+2 EV) exposes shadows correctly.

Editing in Lightroom

As always I started my editing in Adobe Lightroom.

As the images were taken at high ISO I expected there to be some noise, so I set Luminance Noise to 25 in the Noise Reduction panel.

I also applied lens corrections in Lens Corrections tab by checking both Enable Profile Corrections (to get rid of vignetting and distortions) and Remove Chromatic Aberration settings.

After that I exported all my source images to Photomatix Pro using Photomatix Lightroom Export Plugin.

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Post-processing Wednesday: Christmas market

Time for another post in my Post-processing Wednesday series. For more posts from this series go here.

In this case Before photo is 0 EV photo without any adjustments and After image is finished image that I manually blended using luminosity masks in Photoshop.

About source images

There is still some time before next Christmas but today I decided to show you how I edited image captured during exactly that time of the year almost 2 years ago.

You can read more about the image itself in this post. Well, image in that post is slightly different but it shares EXIF data as I was shooting with same parameters for almost whole evening.

As you can see in the Before photo above, some highlights were slightly blown out, especially in the areas near light sources. At the same time some areas were darker than I intended them to be, eg. sky and buildings on the right. So I decided to capture HDR image and for that purpose I took 7 exposures at 1.5 EV spacing. You can see all exposures below sorted from brightest to darkest:

Darkest exposure have all lights correctly exposed and brightest one (+2 EV) exposes shadows correctly.

Editing in Lightroom

As always I started my editing in Lightroom. This time I moved tint of White Balance to +24 to make the image a little bit more magenta. I also applied lens corrections in Lens Corrections tab by checking both Enable Profile Corrections and Remove Chromatic Aberration settings.

After that I exported all my source images to Photoshop for manual blending.

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Post-processing Wednesday: Blue sunset in Mexico

Time for another post in my Post-processing Wednesday series. For more posts like this one, go here.

Today it will be slightly different as instead of a lot of text and a few images there is a video (a few of you asked me whether it would be possible). In this video I show how to use a few tools (Photomatix Pro 5, Lightroom, Photoshop, Topaz plugins and luminosity masks) to create and edit HDR image. I also share a few small tips here and there. As always I'm looking forward to your feedback.

BTW don't forget to subscribe to HDR Photographer Newsletter to receive information about most interesting updates to this blog. You can subscribe here.

Also make sure to subscribe to my YouTube channel in order to be notified whenever I share new videos there.

Ok, without further ado here is the video showing the workflow:

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Post-processing Wednesday: Big Ben in the evening

Time for another post in my Post-processing Wednesday series. For more posts from this series go here.

In this case Before photo is 0 EV photo without any adjustments and After image is tone-mapped and finished HDR image.

About source images

Today image showing some of the London iconic buildings, Big Ben and House of Parliament, is one of my favourite HDR images taken recently. It was beautiful blue hour with the sky being really blue and with some nice orange lights of the House of Parliament and Big Ben contrasting with water and sky.

You can read more about the image in this post. In that very post not only I show exact location and EXIF of the image but I also share some compositional tips.

As you can see in the Before photo above, some highlights were slightly blown out. At the same time some areas were darker than I intended them to be (especially House of Parliament and Westminster Bridge). So I decided to capture HDR image and for that purpose I took 5 exposure at 1 EV spacing. You can see all exposures below. Going from left to right and top to bottom they are: 0 EV, -1 EV, +1 EV, -2 EV and +2 EV.

Darkest exposure (-2 EV) have all lights correctly exposed and brightest one (+2 EV) exposes shadows correctly.

Editing in Lightroom

As always I started my editing in Lightroom. This time, however, the only adjustment I made was applying lens correction by going to Lens Correction tab and checking both Enable Profile Corrections and Remove Chromatic Aberration checkboxes.

Editing in Photomatix Pro

After applying lens corrections to all my source images I opened them in Photomatix Pro 5 by using export plugin to Photomatix. In Photomatix I selected Contrast Optimizer processing method with following settings:

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Post-processing Wednesday: Forest paradise

Time for another post in my Post-processing Wednesday series. For more posts from this series go here.

About photo

Today I would like to share post-processing steps for one of my landscape photos taken last autumn in Polish Tatra mountains. Weather was rather ugly, it was cloudy, dark and raining often so dynamic range of the scene was very low so there was no need to use HDR. That's why I took just a single exposure.

Adjustments to make

In this case Before image shows unedited image and After shows finished image after editing it in Lightroom. Generally speaking Before image already looks quite nice but it would benefit from a few adjustments that were shown in the image above and were listed below:

1. Increase global contrast as the image has fairly low contrast,
2. Increase saturation of yellows and reds to make image more vibrant,
3. Darken rocks in foreground as they attract attention to much and are therefore distracting.

For more details about this photo, including exact location and EXIF metadata as well as link to buying a print, please read this post.

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Post-processing Wednesday: Sunset in Paradise

Time for another post in my Post-processing Wednesday series. For more posts from this series go here.

About photo

Today I will show you how I post-processed one of my landscape HDR photos I took this February in Mexico.

In this case Before image shows unedited 0 EV exposure frame and After shows finished image after applying all adjustments mentioned below. Note that images differ quite a lot and they have even different crop.

Using HDR here was essential as otherwise the image would have very dark shadows (pay attention to rocks in the unedited image). Also some parts of the sky are blown out in the 0 EV photo. HDR helped me to rescue both very dark and very bright parts and ensure they are correctly esposed.

At high level, post-processing of this photo involved following steps:

1. Apply Lens Correction adjustments in Lightroom and export 4 bracketed photos to Photomatix Pro 5 using Photomatix Export Plug-In.
2. In Photomatix Pro 5 tone-map HDR image using Contrast Optimizer tone-mapper to restore highlights in the sky and in the rocks.
3. Crop the image in Lightroom and apply some minor adjustments to boost saturation and fix colour cast.
4. Load image into Photoshop CC and use luminosity masks to increase contrast and colour saturation.

For more details about this photo, including exact location and EXIF metadata, please read this post.

BTW to learn more about HDR photography, make sure to read my free HDR tutorial.

Editing in Lightroom

As always, I started editing in Lightroom by applying lens correction and chromatic aberration reduction. After that I exported my 4 exposures to Photomatix Pro 5 using the Photomatix's Lightroom Export plugin.

Editing in Photomatix Pro

In Photomatix Pro 5 I used Contrast Optimizer tone-mapper with following settings.

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Post-processing Wednesday: Crazy Mayan Dance

Time for another post in my Post-processing Wednesday series. For more posts from this series go here.

Note: if there is particular photo (from my blog) you would like me to present in this series, please leave comment under this post.

About photo

Today photo will be different than in the recent parts of the series. Normally I share post-processing for my HDR photos but... I don't take only HDR photos. So today photo is non-HDR one. What's more this photo was Editor's Choice in Camerapixo We Inspire Vol. 3. - you can read more about it here.

There is one more reason I decided to share this image today. A lot of my photos take me even a few hours to process. Sometimes, however, post-processing is much simpler with just a few steps but the photo still looks very good afterwards. Crazy Mayan Dance belongs to the second group.

For more details about this photo, including exact location and EXIF metadata, please read this post.

Generally speaking processing of this photo was quite easy. It was mostly about correcting colours and improving contrast a little bit. I also increased saturation to make the scene more vibrant, more lively and more dynamic.

At high level, post-processing of this photo involved following steps:

1. Apply some basic adjustments in Lightroom.
2. Load image into Photoshop CC and increase contrast and saturation.

In this case Before image shows unedited image and After shows finished image after applying adjustments mentioned above.

Editing in Lightroom

Adjustments in Lightroom were rather subtle and here is the list of them:

• I brightened the image a little bit by increasing Exposure to +0,20.
• At the same time I wanted to preserve highlights so I dragged Highlights slider to -33.
• However, decreasing Highlights has the effect of lowering the contrast in the image so in order to maintain it, I increased the Whites to +25.
• I also increased Vibrance to +31.
• I also enabled lens corrections to reduce any lens vignetting and get rid of distortion.

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Post-processing Wednesday: Just before storm

Time for another post in my Post-processing workflow series. For more posts from this series go here.

Note: As part of bigger changes to my blog (more on them later this week) from now on this series is renamed to Post-processing Wednesday and as the name suggests new parts of this series will appear regularly on Wednesday (except when I'm travelling as I don't write new posts during my travels). Some posts of this series will be in written form while others in a form of video.

About photo

Today I will show you how I post-processed one of my favourite landscape photos I took this February in Mexico. It was some pretty nice sunset initially but after a few minutes dark clouds appeared creating some dramatic mood and light. A few minutes later severe tropical storm began and I had to flee in order to protect my gear.

For more details about this photo, including exact location and EXIF metadata, please read this post.

At high level, post-processing of this photo involved following steps:

1. Apply some basic adjustments in Lightroom to whole bracketed sequence.
2. Load bracketed photos into Photomatix Pro 5 and tone-map them using Contrast Optimizer tone-mapper to restore highlights in the sky and add some local contrast.
3. Load tone-mapped image into Photoshop CC and use luminosity masks to increase contrast and colour saturation.

In this case Before image shows unedited 0 EV exposure frame and After shows finished image after applying all adjustments mentioned above.

BTW to learn more about HDR photography, make sure to read my free HDR tutorial.

Editing in Lightroom

This time the only adjustments I made in Lightroom were lens correction and chromatic aberration reduction. After that I exported my 7 exposures to Photomatix Pro 5 using the Photomatix's Lightroom Export plugin.

Editing in Photomatix Pro

In Photomatix Pro 5 I used Contrast Optimizer tone-mapper with following settings.

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Post-processing workflow: Blue Sunset

Introduction

Time for another post in my Post-processing workflow series. For more posts from this series go here.

Today I will show you how I did post-process one of my favourite HDR images taken in last few months. I took it very recently by Vistula river bank in Warsaw, Poland. Despite the fact I was still in the boundaries of the city and just a few kilometres from its centre I managed to find a place that looked like being in the middle of wilderness. There I waited for sunset. It was very short but for a few minutes colours were really gorgeous.

In this case Before shows 0 EV exposure images and After shows finished image.

BTW to learn more about HDR photography, read my HDR tutorial.

Editing in Lightroom

This time the only adjustment I made in Lightroom was lens correction and chromatic aberration reduction. After that I exported my 5 exposures to Photomatix Pro 5.

Editing in Photomatix Pro

In Photomatix Pro 5 I used Contrast Optimizer tone-mapper with following settings.

Continue reading for more details »

Post-processing workflow: City in Motion

Introduction

I'm trying to post my Post-processing Workflow regularly but you know how it is :) Nevertheless today I'd like to share yet another one, for more posts from this series go here.

Today photo is a blue hour long-exposure HDR image from Warsaw, Poland. I took it a few weeks ago when there was first (and so far last) snow this winter. For more information about this photo, visit this post. You will find there EXIF data, precise location info, links to buying prints and quite a long post detailing process of taking this photo (what wasn't trivial by the way).

In this case Before shows one of the 0 EV exposure images and After shows blended and finished image. Quite a difference, huh?

BTW to learn more about HDR photography, read my HDR tutorial.

This photo was one of the toughest image I post-processed this year because it in fact consisted of 40 images with varying exposures that I had to manually blend. Photoshop didn't like it very much and even simple operations could take forever.

There were two main goals of blending:

• Fix exposure so both shadows and highlights were properly exposed,
• Make the light trails longer and brighter. In theory I could simply take one image with very long exposure instead of several ones with shorter ones. Unfortunately it wasn't possible. I was shooting from an opened terrace and the wind was very strong on that day. So strong that my tripod was shaking slightly. With shorter exposures (but still around 10 seconds) I could fit between stronger blows thus reducing chance of blurry photos.

Editing in Lightroom

Ok, without further ado, let's talk about editing.

As always I started my editing in Adobe Lightroom where I enabled profile corrections to remove distortion and vignetting and also changed white balance to make the image more magentish. I applied these changes to all my source exposures:

Take a look at the image above for one more second. I displayed rules of third grid on it so you can see in what way I composed this photo.

Basically I used rule of thirds - 1/3rd of height is occupied by sky and 2/3rds by city itself. Also I put virtual end of the road in one of the grid points to make the composition even more attractive.

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Post-processing workflow: Hotel at Night

It's been a long while since my last Post-processing Workflow post so it's high time for a new one (for more comparisons like this one go here). In case you want to buy image from this post as canvas print, you can do it here.

BTW to learn more about HDR photography, read my HDR tutorial.

Today a High Dynamic Range blue hour photo I took in Mexico in the gardens of the hotel in which I stayed - Barcelo Maya Resort in Puerto Aventuras. It has many advantages but one of the greatest are its beautiful gardens and pools. After shooting sunsets I was wandering through them during blue hours and evenings taking even more photos. This specific image was taken on the Valentine's Day during which the bridges in the resort were decorated in hundred small lamps.

In this case Before image is image from Photomatix Pro after using Fusion/Real-Estate method and After is a finished image after applying luminosity masks adjustments in Photoshop.

Below you can see 0 EV photo from my bracketed sequence:

As you can see the image is quite nice, however, it's too dark and there are some highlights (like palm tree trunk) that are completely blown-out. To restore both highlights and shadows I needed to capture as many as 9 exposures at 1 EV spacing in this case. The longest exposure was 30 seconds, while the shortest one - just 1/8 s.

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Post-processing workflow: Dynamic water

It's been a while since my last post-processing workflow so it's high time for a new one (for more comparisons like this one go here). Also from now on this series will be known as Post-processing workflow.

Today a photo I took 1.5 years ago on Fuerteventura island. The highlights in the 0 EV photo (Before) are blown out making the sky look almost completely white and very flat even though in reality it was very interesting. Thanks to HDR I was able to restore them, including beautiful yellows just above horizon caused by rising sun. I took 5 photos at 1 EV spacing but I ended up using only -1 EV, 0 EV and +1 EV photos as the remaining 2 didn't contribute to the image that much.

BTW to learn more about HDR photography, read my HDR tutorial.

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Before/after comparison: Welcome to Mordor

It's been a while since my last post-processing workflow so it's high time for a new one (for more comparisons like this one go here).

Today a photo which I called Welcome to Mordor (for details, like EXIF data, about original photo click here). The highlights in the 0 EV photo (Before) are completely blown out making the sky look almost completely white... Thanks to HDR I was able to restore them, including some beautiful sun rays. I decided to take only 3 exposures spaced at 2 EV in this case as the scene didn't have very extreme dynamic range.

BTW to learn more about HDR photography, read my HDR tutorial.

As usually, I started my post-processing in Lightroom where I corrected white balance, reduced chromatic aberration and fixed distortion on my source photos.

Then I exported them to Photomatix Pro 5 to fuse my 3 images there using Fusion/Real-Estate that was introduced in version 5. In the image below you can see my exact settings. Note that I used -10.0 for Highlights to restore as much as possible from them. I also set Shadows to 2.2 to brighten them up a little bit and finally I set Local Contrast to 2.9 to increase clarity of the image just slightly.

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Tutorial: Create painterly looking photos

Click on the photo to view it in large size on black background.

There wasn't a single tutorial in a few weeks so today I would like to share with you a video tutorial on creating painterly looking images like the one above or the one here.

The process is very simple and it involves using only Photoshop, Topaz Simplify plug-in and some simple layer masking. What I wanted to achieve is to combine painterly look while retaining some of the detail and textures.

Ok, without further ado, watch the video below to learn exact steps:

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Before/after comparison: Golden clouds

It's time for yet another before/after comparison + some post-processing details (for more comparisons like this one go here), where I share my post-processing workflow.

Today a photo I took during beautiful sunset by the lake. Warm light turned clouds into real gold (or gems). This scene was extreme example of why HDR is sometimes necessary - the highlights in the 0 EV photo (Before) are completely blown out making the sky look completely white... Also shadows are way too dark. Thanks to HDR I was able to restore them. I decided to take 7 exposures spaced at 1 EV to capture whole dynamic range of the scene. To learn more about HDR photography, read my HDR tutorial.

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Before/after comparison: Ducks Race

It's time for yet another before/after comparison + some post processing details (for more comparisons like this one go here), where I share my post-processing workflow. This time - Smreczynski Pond (Staw Smreczynski) a small yet very beautiful lake in Tatra mountains. When I was taking some landscape photos there a group of ducks appeared out of nowhere and with quite a great speed they raced through the lake, hence the title of this photo - Ducks Race.

This time I took 5 exposures at 1 EV spacing, and used manual blending. However, during manual blending I dropped +2 EV exposure because it didn't provide any improvement to image quality. In this case 0 EV photo is Before and final processed image is After. As you can see the difference isn't huge. I wanted to keep the final image as close to the original as possible.

Some of you might wonder why did I use manual blending in this case? Well, there is no particular reason. I just want to know various techniques and although I use Photomatix Pro 99% of the time when I process HDR images (because I'm happy with the results) sometimes I just try something different.

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Before/after comparison: on the track

It's time for yet another before/after comparison + some post processing details (for more comparisons like this one go here), where I share my post-processing workflow. This time the very beautiful Hala Gąsienicowa in Polish Tatra Mountains. In this case the light was quite weird if I may put it this way. In foreground the light was very bright and warm but background was hidden in the shadow cast by the clouds making it look dark and sad.

This time I took only 3 exposures at 2 EV spacing, merged them to HDR and tone-mapped in Photomatix Pro using Details Enhancer at the very soft settings because I wanted tone-mapped image to look very close to 0 EV photo (which is Before). In this case I used HDR and tone-mapping mainly to restore details in the clouds. Then I edited my image with luminosity masks technique in Photoshop CC (After).

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Before/after comparison: hala Gasienicowa

It's time for yet another before/after comparison + some post processing details (for more comparisons go here). This time the very beautiful Hala Gąsienicowa in Polish Tatra Mountains.

This time I took only 3 exposures at 2 EV spacing, merged them to HDR and tone-mapped in Photomatix Pro (which is Before). Then I edited my image with luminosity masks technique in Photoshop CC (After).

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Before/after comparison: Colourful sunset

Time for another before/after comparison + some post processing details (for more go here). This time a sunset photographed in Masuria region, Poland.

I took 7 exposures at 1 EV spacing, merged them to HDR and tone-mapped in Photomatix Pro (which is Before). Then I edited my image with luminosity masks technique in Photoshop CC (After).

In the image below you can see what layers I used to create final image. Starting from bottom they are. As you can see I grouped the layers in err... groups. This way the work can be organized much better because I instantly know where certain layer is. In this case it's not a big problem but sometimes I have images with much more layers where this becomes an issue.

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Colours of autumn

Click on the photo to view it in large size on black background.

Autumn is one of my favourite seasons with some very nice warm light and beautiful colours. One of my favourite places to photograph it in Warsaw is Royal Baths Park (aka Royal Lazienki Park and Łazienki Królewskie in Polish). Trees covered in yellows, oranges and reds look really beautiful reflecting in numerous ponds and small rivers.

I took above photo just a few days ago and there are still a lot of greens as it is just beginning of autumn in Poland so I will need to revisit this place.

BTW if you're interested in how I post-processed this photo in Photoshop after using Photomatix Pro here is a short time-lapse:

And finally some technical specs:

Technical details:
Camera: Canon 5D MK III
Lens: Canon 24-105 f/4 L IS USM
Focal length: 24 mm
Aperture: f/7.1
Exposure time: 1/80 s ("middle" exposure)
ISO: 1000
Number of exposures: 5
E.V. Step: 1
Flash used: no
Tripod: no
Filters: circular polarizing filter
Technique: exposure fusion, luminosity masks
Software: Magic Lantern 2.3, Photomatix Pro 4.2.7 (Fusion/Natural), Lightroom 5.0, Photoshop CC

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