I thought that I’d create a post showing how I created an image this morning. I’ve been spending a bit of time brushing up on skills and looking into tutorials recently, so I thought it was time to put into use what I had learnt and share that with my viewers.
Generally I use several filter packages, however this time I thought that I would see what I could do without any gizmos.
Firstly I dropped my brackets into Photomatix to create my base HDR image. In this case the image is made up of nine images shot at one stop intervals. I have several presets saved in Photomatix so used one of these as a base and tweaked it slightly to get the results that I wanted for this specific image.
The image is made up of 12 layers, mostly adjustments in toning and exposure.
- Hue and Saturation: I felt that there greens were too bright so the first task was to tone them down a little
- RAW Pre-Sharpener was the only packaged filter used in this image, it simply sharpens up the image a little. I could have achieved this with a high pass filter though
- I duplicated the layer (ALT / Ctrl / Shift / E)
- The duplicated layer was blurred using the Surface Blur filter
- This was inverted and blending was changed to Overlay
- Another duplicate layer was produced (Layer 4)
- More desaturation was applied using a Hue Saturation layer
- Two adjustment layers were added, one over,one under exposed, these layers are inverted to reveal the layer below. I use a soft brush to paint in the high and low lights where i think that they are required, or to bring out detail
- Yet another desaturation layer to dim the greens of the foliage was added
- Finally I added a vignette layer. Simply a new layer filled with black and an elliptical marque with large feather. I then reduced the opacity to reveal the detail underneath.
That’s it – a fairly straight forward workflow. All in all the image took less than 30 minutes to produce. I hope that you fount this helpful, please comment if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to help out.
Very interesting process Mark. I like the idea of the darker and lighter layers used to adjust lighting in specific areas! May have to try that! Well done!
I love HDR processing…saving up some mula so that I can get some software to learn to use it.
Dear Mark
Would you mind clarifying your use of the surface blur filter. When I use that step, invert the layer and switch to the Overlay blend mode, the image looks somewhat strange and this appearance is exaggerated when I duplicate the layer. Am I missing something here? Regards, Rob Draper
Hi Robert –
I think I possibly made a mistake in the tutorial (oops). I’ve run through it again and cant get the same results. the surface blur looks strange you’re right.
What you can do is the following:
. Create the base image
. Copy the image
. Use a HIGH PASS filter with radius of between 5-15
. Set blending to HARD LIGHT on that layer
That should give you something sharp – possibly too sharp – you can tone it down a bit with the Opacity.
To be honest the most important thing for me is the shading of the +/- exposure layers, this can drastically change the image and of course gives you control over the lighting.
I hope this is of help.
Mark B