Synopshots

Alpine Stream

A client, RSD, held their annual sales kickoff meeting high in the Alps above Gstaad, a fine community all right about an hour from Montreux.

This pic, a bit of a cliche to be sure, is the result of several key processing enhancements.

First, it's five frames blended and tone-mapped using Photomatix Pro.  When I brought the TIFF into camera raw, I was amazed by the register accuracy.  So just the same I went and made some detail / sharpness adjustments in camera raw.

In Photoshop, it required a crop from the original.  I used Topaz -- quirky given the memory constraints but still a fine tool -- to bring up local contrast to create the texture, and to boost some of the saturation.

I used a mask to reduce some of the overzealous pixel effects, especially on the water.

Surface blur enabled me to remove some of the distracting detail in the surrounding trees.  I really wanted to keep attention on the rocks and water.

Finally, an elliptical selection, quick mask, gaussian blur and fill with black: to produce a bit of vignette around those same tree detail areas.

Enjoy!

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Tags: Alps, Alpine stream, synopshots, Switzerland, Suisse, Schweitz

Cathedral of St. Peter, Geneva, Switzerland

Cathedral of St. Peter, Geneva, Switzerland, originally uploaded by TimDD.

Updated with Giorgos~ generously shared technique for creating that awesomely professional looking drop shadow.

Processing High Dynamic Range Images: Tutorial -- has MOVED!!! See below

Taliesin West, Pool Studio and Kitchen, originally uploaded by TimDD.

The tutorial has moved... please enjoy the tutorial here...

Thanks.

Kobe being Kobe: Flickr's "most interesting" photo of Kobe Bryant

Kobe-being-Kobe, originally uploaded by TimDD.

This photo has now become "the most interesting" photo on Flickr when you seach for "Kobe Bryant."  Amazing.  Volume up especially as Kobe recently reached the 20,000 point milestone (before age 30). I heard on SportsCenter this morning that Wilt reached this point in five fewer seasons...

VitalStatistics.info politely asked to use this photo on their site for an article on Kobe. A first for me. Very cool.

Neighbor-Mod

Neighbor-Mod, originally uploaded by TimDD.

The near-final result.

Process step 3: building "Neighbor-Mod"

By creating a layer for the house alone, I could call up another great processing tool: LucisArt (www.lucisart.com).  This plug-in for Photoshop has a couple of effects -- I use Exposure, Sculpture, Whyetha and Winslow -- and each has setting buttons and sliders that I just had to experiment with to understand.  It allowed me to bring much more light and life to the house, while I dealt with issues in the surrounding areas separately.

The house is starting to emerge from the shadows.

Process step 2: building "Neighbor-Mod"

This is already looking better, but there is still much work to be done.  I have traded an overall shadowed image for one which fails to highlight the house itself, much less that fabulous roof line.  So I get to work in Photoshop... first cropping the image down, then establishing layers: one for the house itself, one for the remainder of the shot -- both the lawn / foreground and the trees and sky.

Process step 1: building "Neighbor-Mod"

We have always loved this house... right down the street from where we live.  Here's the original exposure (taken with a Nikon D70).

You can see a leaf falling (unnoticed at the time of capture), a nice cloud, some annoying branches, deep deep shaodws.  This is not a very interesting picture.

But I love the line of that roof, and the clean design of the building.  So I took three exposures, bracketing -2 stops and +2 stops.  I took all three images and processed them with Photomatix (www.hdrsoft.com).