The Cloud – Castle Hohenneuffen, Germany (HDR)

The story of this photo

This is a shot of the Hohenneuffen Castle, one of the many ancient castles on the Swabian Alb (Schwaebische Alb), Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany. This is the same place as in this shot. It was a beautiful day in July, and I was fascinated by the dialog between the clouds and the tree on the left.

I just needed a little break from processing the honeymoon photos. 😉 So I am posting this one from my home location.

How it was shot

• Taken handheld [details]
• Camera: Nikon D90
• Lens: Sigma 10-20mm F3,5 EX DC HSM
• Details can be found here

How it was tonemapped

• 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
• Topaz Adjust on the entire image to get back the colors and the details [details]
• Topaz Denoise [details]
• Saturation layer on the sky (master)
• Curves layer on the sky
• Halo reduction in the sky using a levels adjustment layer (gamma ~ 0.8) and delicate masking to blend this darker layer into those halo spots around the poles [details]
• Saturation layer on some parts of the castle to tone down the yellows
• Saturation layer on the castle (master)
• Levels layer on the castle to increase the contrast
• Saturation layer on the valley (yellows)
• Saturation layer on the green in the foreground (toned down the yellows)
• Sharpening using the high-pass filter [details]

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