City at Night

[savona]

I was out messing around with a friend of mine tonight. Decided to take the camera along and get some shots of the city. I tried HDR in photoshop and it didnt work out so well, so I did it manually. C & C Please.




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[JohnQ]

WOW! I am surprised nobody commented on these yet. The second image is just incredible. How did you achieve this look?

[studio206]

I like your use of foreground, middle-ground, and background. nice work

[Ronald S. Jr.]

Fantastic. Just love the reflection in the water.

[Adaptive]

I'm still suprised you have the guts to walk around in "the city or brotherly love" with your expensive equipment all alone... :)

[savona]

I'm still suprised you have the guts to walk around in "the city or brotherly love" with your expensive equipment all alone... :)


I grew up on 8th and Snyder, if you know our fair city you would know that it is one of the worst neighborhoods in the city. I dont scare easily and I swing a tripod like Mark McGuire! :)

ahha, in all seriousness, I do try to bring someone with me. I can be real vulnerable with one eye closed and the other fixed in the viewfinder. I try to bring my buddy to watch my back.

[Adaptive]

I grew up on 8th and Snyder, if you know our fair city you would know that it is one of the worst neighborhoods in the city. I dont scare easily and I swing a tripod like Mark McGuire! :)

ahha, in all seriousness, I do try to bring someone with me. I can be real vulnerable with one eye closed and the other fixed in the viewfinder. I try to bring my buddy to watch my back.


lol :D :cool:

[patrific]

I was going to make a baseball comment but decided against it!! I think you have three great pictures. I must admit the bridge shots (because of the reflected colors) are very stunning. Your pictures are so clear and clean. I guess I would rate the second one as first and then the third and then the first one. The clarity and color in the second picture is the best of the three, in my humble opinion. Good you have a friend to watch out for you -- sounds like a rough place to me. I am hoping HDR gets easier or better in the new versions of PS. I have some mixed results at times but then again that might be the loose nut behind the camera!?

[savona]

I was going to make a baseball comment but decided against it!! I think you have three great pictures. I must admit the bridge shots (because of the reflected colors) are very stunning. Your pictures are so clear and clean. I guess I would rate the second one as first and then the third and then the first one. The clarity and color in the second picture is the best of the three, in my humble opinion. Good you have a friend to watch out for you -- sounds like a rough place to me. I am hoping HDR gets easier or better in the new versions of PS. I have some mixed results at times but then again that might be the loose nut behind the camera!?

Baseball comment?

I do all my HDR manually with layer masks, I never had any luck with the merge to HDR function of PS.

[Desmond]

Baseball comment?

I do all my HDR manually with layer masks, I never had any luck with the merge to HDR function of PS.

HDR? Sorry I a a newbie but curious. What's HDR? :confused:

[Ronald S. Jr.]

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. You know how normally when you take say a landscape shot, you expose for either the highlights, midtones, or shadows? Well, you know that a DSLR has a technical dynamic range of only a few stops. Usually, unless special filters are applied, your sky will be slightly overexposed, or the ground slightly underexposed, or what have you. With HDR, you can create a "dream like" appearance by using different methods, one of which is to take three bracketed shots of the same scene, and blend them together using the highlights from one, the midtones from another, and the shadows from the third. This will essentially give you a "perfect" exposure.

[Desmond]

This sounds like a lot of work (to a newbie).

So I would set up my camera with Exposure Bracketing (I would assume at quite extreme ends of bracketing?!?) and then take the shot, then pick as you say the highlights from one, midtones from another and the shadows from the third, put them in layers in PS and then merge them?

Am I close?

These pictures are so nice, I am interested in how to achieve these.

Des.

[Desmond]

After a bit of reading, I guess I will be hitting the town tonight to try this LOL.

[savona]

This sounds like a lot of work (to a newbie).

So I would set up my camera with Exposure Bracketing (I would assume at quite extreme ends of bracketing?!?) and then take the shot, then pick as you say the highlights from one, midtones from another and the shadows from the third, put them in layers in PS and then merge them?

Am I close?

These pictures are so nice, I am interested in how to achieve these.

Des.

I think I am going to write a little tutorial on HDR my way. I think I may do it just a little different than most people. I use layer masks and opaque options in PS.

First I will take around 3-5 shots of something. One underexposed, one exposed correctly for the subject, and one over exposed a bit. (Or more with just a stop or two differece).

Now I will layer them all in one file.

Next I will see what I can get my setting the opaqueness of the layers. This usually works good with the brighter (top layers) and the darker layers are under them. If I feel I have gotten good highlights I will merge those layers (not all the layers, just the few I used for highlights).

Then I will create a layer mask on each additional layers starting with one up from the bottom. (make all the other layers that you are NOT working with invisible). I will paint with a soft brush with low opaqueness (is that even a word?) white or black depending on what I want to show through. When I feel like I have pulled everything from a layer I will merge it down and move up to the next layer until I am done.

I know this is probably not a good explanation, but it is 2 am! :)

I will try to get a small tutorial together soon.

Here are a couple quick lessons on layer masks:
http://www.ephotozine.com/techniques/viewtechnique.cfm?recid=334

Here is a video tutorial:
http://www.oman3d.com/tutorials/photoshop/learnphotoshop_layermasks/

[Desmond]

Oh, I see what you are getting at here. You need a lot of patience and I think if I seriously got into this aspect I would need to invest in a Wacom to make this a more enjoyable process.

Thanks for the little tutorial. It makes sense, and also it would have made my town hall shot a lot better.

When I have more time and not at work (oops) then I will have another crack at it.

Des.