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)
- Oval wooden floor
- 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]
Thank you. There are some useful tips.
Beautiful shot as always, I have to say that 5am for a tour is a little early. The tours we usually do on cruises are at around 10 am, it is great though to find somewhere quite on a trip.
Wie immer ein großartiges Foto!
Danke für all die hilfreichen Tips auf deiner Seite!