Damian Parker from Lifestyle HDR sent me this image and asked me to see what I could do
with it. This is my workflow, but there's more than one way to do it.
I opened the file from Rage in Adobe Camera Raw. I then applied some lens correction and
removed any chromatic aberration. I then used the ruler tool to ensure that the horizon
line was horizontal. I then chose the appropriate white balance, in this case daylight.
I then pulled the highlights all the way back. I then had to ascertain a good dynamic range.
To do this, I played with the exposure slider and decided to go with the range from negative
0.5 to plus 1.5. To get 5 component images in this range, I would need to use the spacing
of 0.5. I then positioned the exposure slider at what would be the middle component, or
plus 0.5. Now, working from this component, I cranked up the Shadows slider to bring more
definition into the darker areas of the image, particularly around the base of the jetty.
I then applied a white point correction. Now to do this, I held down the Alt key, or Option
on a Mac, and pulled back on the white slider. The highlighted areas on the black area indicate
which areas of the image would be treated as the brightest. I then similarly applied
the black point correction holding down the Alt key, again Option on a Mac. And while
pulling back on the black slider, the darkened areas on the white area indicate which areas
of the image would be treated as the darkest. I then raised the values of the vibrance and
saturation sliders. I didn't use the clarity slider on purpose, as I didn't want to bring
out any intense details in the water in the foreground. I then raised the Amount slider
on the sharpening parameters to 100% to make the edge of the image look crisp. I then applied
a graduated filter from the top to the bottom of the image, where I applied a slightly blue
tinge, pulled back on the exposure and highlight sliders, then increased the clarity and saturation.
I then applied a second graduated filter from the bottom to the top of the image, where
I applied a more pronounced blue tinge, pulled up on the exposure, back on the highlights,
and increased the clarity and saturation. Because this is a graduated filter, the detail
enhancement brought about by increasing the clarity would be most pronounced at the bottom
where the sand lies. Now jumping back to the basic image adjustments, I varied the exposure
slider from negative 0.5 to plus 1.5 with a spacing of 0.5 and created 5 component images,
which I saved as full quality JPEGs. Each of these files were assigned a functional
name for ease of identification later on in the workflow.
Once done, I closed out a bit of the camera raw and opened up Photomatix Pro. I loaded
up the 5 created component images into Photomatix. I defined their spacing to Photomatix, in
this case half. I only enabled the reduce chromatic aberrations option in Photomatix.
Photomatix takes a few seconds to produce an initial HDR image. I first reset Photomatix
to its default settings before working through the individual sliders. Now starting from
the top, I raised the strength slider to 90. I set the color saturation to 50 after trying
a few different settings. After much trial and almost as much error, I went with a negative
2.0 with a luminosity slider. I decided to leave the detail contrast slider at 0. After
a little more experimentation, I set the lighting adjustment slider to 1. I pulled back on the
saturation highlight slider to negative 2.0. Likewise, I also pulled back on the saturation
shadow slider to negative 1. I then hit process. Photomatix takes a few seconds to create a
turn mapped HDR image, which I then saved as a full quality JPEG. Closing out of Photomatix,
I loaded the turn mapped HDR image into Photoshop. I also loaded the middle component image that
we created in a Derby Camera Raw into Photoshop. I copied the entire middle component image
and pasted it into the HDR turn mapped image as a new layer. Once done, I closed the middle
component image. Then, focusing on the turn mapped HDR image, I turned off the visibility
of the new layer and worked from the background layer. I fired up Nik ColorFX Pro. Now I had
a saved recipe in Nik ColorFX, but in essence it's made of the following Nik ColorFX filters.
The Pro Contrast filter with 50% dynamic range enhancement. A graduated neutral density filter
going from the top to the bottom. A polarisation filter with 33% polarisation. A skylight filter
at 20%. And a sunlight filter at 5% intensity with a colour temperature of 6800K. Once applied,
Nik ColorFX created another layer with the applied effects. Now operating on the new
layer using the quick select tool, I selected the area that defined the sky. Once having
completed making the selection, I applied 3 pixels of feathering. I then inverted the
selection to select the jetty and the waters of the sea. I then activated the layer we created
using the middle component image. With the selection still active, I copied and pasted
the selection in as new layer. Selecting this new layer as the active layer, I launched
Nik ColorFX. I used the same Nik ColorFX recipe as I had before, but I made a few subtle changes.
I pulled the dynamic range enhancement on the Pro Contrast filter back to 10%. On the
sunlight filter, I set the colour temperature to 7200K. Once applied, Nik ColorFX created
another layer with the applied filters. Activating all the layers created by Nik, I flattened
the image. I then used Noiseware to apply some noise reduction using the landscape setting.
I used DXO for your point to crop this image and the principles of the perfect ratio. But
you can do this using the crop tool and Photoshop while doing the math yourself. And I finally
applied some vignetting using Nik ColorFX. I flattened the image and saved it as a full
quality JPEG. So here we are finally with before and after images, but as I said before,
there's more than one way to do it.
