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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