The Lounge (HDR)

Check out the Before-and-After Comparison of this image.

The story of this photo

This isa 3-exposure HDR image of the lounge of a big cruise ship. A cruise is the best way of getting to see many places in a short time. At night, as you’re sleeping, you’re being taken to the next stop on your journey. You’re usually getting up really early (sometimes around 5 am) to meet your group and debark for your shore leave. This was taken around that time. At this particular day, we visited Istanbul.

How the photos were shot

• Taken hand-held
• Three exposures (+2EV, 0EV, -2EV)
• Camera: Nikon D7000
• Lens: Nikon AF-S DX Nikkor 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5G ED

Take a look at the Dynamic Before-and-After feature for this image. It lets you slide back and forth between the original and the processed image.

How the HDR image was created and tonemapped

• CA reduction and white balance correction on all source exposures in Adobe Camera Raw
• Saved the 3 images as TIFFs
• Created one additional +4EV image from the original +2EV source photo [details]. The image was gently blended in manually to get back some details in the darkest areas.
• Applied noise reduction (Topaz Denoise) to each of the source images [details]
• Resulting TIFFs from the original RAW images (+2EV, 0EV, -2EV) were then used as input to Photomatix (Details Enhancer option)

How the tonemapped image was post-processed

• Post-processing was done in Photoshop
• Topaz Adjust for enhancing the colors and the lighting [details]
• Local adjustments
  • Oval wooden floor
    • Curves layer for more contrast
    • Saturation layer: toning down the reds and the yellows
    • Photo filter (orange) to get back the original color
  • Metal plates
    • Curves layer to get more contrast and enhance the reflective look
    • Saturation layer to desaturate the metal
  • Ceiling
    • Saturation layer: slight desaturation and decrease of lightness
    • Levels layer: improve general contrast
  • White rim in the ceiling
    • Saturation layer: desaturation
    • Levels layer for better contrast and more brightness
  • Golden elements of the pavilion
    • Saturation layer (yellows)
• Global adjustments
  • Levels and Saturation layers for global fine-tuning
• Blending with original exposures
  • Blending in the original 0EV exposure to fix the yellow highlights on the pavilion
  • Blending in the +2EV and the artificial +4EV exposures to lighten the palm trees
• Slight vignetting [details]
• Watermarking [details]
• Sharpening using the High-Pass method [details]

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