No. 45 (HDR)

The story of this photo

View the Before-and-After Comparison to see where this photo comes from!

This shot was taken in Sidi Bou Said, a place near Tunis where many artists (also western artists) were staying to seek inspiration. All buildings in this town are white with blue windows and doors.

I think a door is a fitting metaphor for this time of the year: We are leaving the past year behind us and enter a new year, uncertain of what lies behind this opening door but with high hopes, ready to meet new people and make new experiences. May this door bring new inspiration to you and your loved ones.

Ok, that was the philosophical part, and now to the photo: 😉 I know that some HDR purists may argue that the walls are slightly blown out in some areas. Well, believe it or not, but I did this on purpose in post-processing despite the fact that the details were actually present in the image data. This was a very bright day under the Mediterranean sun and it was about noon. All those white walls in this town created an extremely bright ambient light that was quite unique. In fact, many of those walls actually appeared blown out to my eyes because the dynamic range was so big. I was trying to recreate this in the photo while retaining as much detail as possible.

How it was shot

• Taken handheld [details]
• Camera: Nikon D90
• Lens: Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 18-200mm 1:3,5-5,6G ED VR
• Details can be found here

How it was tonemapped

• Preparation: developed the raw files with ACR mainly in order to reduce the CA [details]
• HDR creation and tonemapping using Photomatix version 3.1 (Detail Enhancer)
• Saved as 16bit TIF

How it was post-processed

• Post-processing was done in Photoshop
• Slight perspective correction to straighten the important lines in the photo
• Topaz Adjust on the entire image to get back the colors and the details [details]
• Topaz Denoise [details]
• Saturation and photo filter layers on the floor to enhance the red tones
• Saturation layer on the white wall (slight desaturation)
• Saturation layer on the blues (master)
• Levels layer on the blues (brightening)
• Saturation layer on the blacks (desaturation)
• Levels layer on the blacks (darkening)
• Vignette effect using a masked fill layer [details]
• Sharpening using the high-pass filter [details]
• Watermarking

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