The Alley (HDR)

Check out the Dynamic Before-and-After for this image. Simply slide back and forth between the original 0EV photo and the HDR version.

The story of this photo

This is the entrance area of Wiblingen Abbey – one of the many great old abbeys in southern Germany. This place is over 900 years old – well, not the buildings you see here, but the place in general. Be sure to visit it if you happen to be in the area around Ulm.

Since providing the source photos with my previous upload was such great fun for everybody (including myself), I am giving out the source photos for this one again. Be sure to grab them and produce your own version of this image. Show us the resuts in the HDR group.

So, boys and gals, you have an assignment for the weekend!!! 😉

Enjoy!

How it was shot

• Handheld [details]
• Three exposures (-2, 0, +2 EV) autobracketed and merged to get and HDR
• Camera: Nikon D7000
• Lens: Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G ED
• Details can be found here

How it was tonemapped

• Preparation: developed the raw files with ACR mainly in order to reduce the CA [details]
• Created additional exposures in ACR
• Applied noise reduction (Topaz Denoise) to each of the source images [details]
• Resulting TIFF images were then used as input to Photomatix
• Tone-mapping: Photomatix Pro 4.0 (Detail Enhancer)

How it was post-processed

• Post-processing was done in Photoshop
• Perspective correction and cropping
• Topaz Adjust on the entire image to get back the colors and the details [details]
• Topaz Infocus on the entire image for sharpening
• Saturation layer on the buildings (master)
• Levels layer on the buildings (more contrast)
• Saturation layers on the roofs (toning down the reds)
• Saturation layer on the sky (master)
• Levels layer on the sky (contrast)
• Saturation layer on the clouds (desaturation)
• Levels layer on the clouds (more contrast)
• Levels layer on the floor (more ocntrast)
• Saturation layer on the path (desaturation)
• Saturation layer on the sand (master, yellows)
• Global saturation layer (master)
• Global levels layer (contrast – masked to preserve highlights)
• Vignette effect using a masked fill layer [details]
• Sharpening using the high-pass filter [details]
• Watermarking [details]

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