{"id":9986,"date":"2017-10-28T14:38:02","date_gmt":"2017-10-28T14:38:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/?p=9986"},"modified":"2023-07-02T14:16:24","modified_gmt":"2023-07-02T14:16:24","slug":"photo-cooked-many-ways","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/photo-cooked-many-ways\/%20","title":{"rendered":"Same Photo Cooked Many Ways"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunset at Gross Glockner – Tirol – Austria<\/h1>\n

Do you ever take a shot and never manage to settle on a final edited look?<\/p>\n

Well this happened with this shot – it’s one of 3 brackets taken at sunset with a 17mm TSe\u00a0lens… so nice and sharp, oodles of data to play with…. but what to do?<\/p>\n

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Flat HDR<\/h1>\n

First off I did a HDR blend and flattened the image out a bit…<\/p>\n

Way too much detail in this and it looks a bit bland. But a start point to throw it into NIK plugins<\/p>\n

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NIK Efex<\/h1>\n

So I ran them in this order:-<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. DFine – noise reduction<\/li>\n
  2. Pre Sharpener<\/li>\n
  3. Viveza – contrast and colour<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Managed to keep the shot from burning out or going black, but still not quite there yet.<\/p>\n

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    Colour EFEX<\/h1>\n

    I took the above and tried a mix of filters in Colour EFEX – I think there was<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Detail Extractor<\/li>\n
    2. Pro Contrast<\/li>\n
    3. Graduated Filter<\/li>\n
    4. something else I can’t remember<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      So you can see we got to a darker place and reduced the colours a lot. The process introduced a fair bit of noise in the sky, so ran it through DFine again!<\/p>\n

      \"\"<\/p>\n

      Analog EFex<\/h1>\n

      Had a go at taking the Viveza output through Analog EFEX this time…<\/p>\n

      Not sure it worked as well as the colour efex version. Analog is better for quirky portraits and city shots than landscapes.<\/p>\n

      \"\"<\/p>\n

      Rewind – HDR EFEX<\/h1>\n

      So for this one, I flattened the original RAW files, selected all 2 and exported them to HDR EFEX.<\/p>\n

      I’m not a massive fan of this plugin, it tends towards the unbelievable end of the HDR spectrum, which is no good commercially.<\/p>\n

      But for landscape… well here’s where I got to, after a while meddling. It’s definitely a powerful tool.<\/p>\n

      \"\"<\/p>\n

      MINIMAL with the dark HDR RAW<\/h1>\n

      So after all the detail, how about making something dark and menacing.<\/p>\n

      The dark shot had the most potential – with fleeting light, deep reds and the snow just about poking out of the gloom.<\/p>\n

      So this is the darkest of the 3 HDR shots – the shadows lowered and colours upped a little. The highlights and white clip were meddled around with in LIGHTROOM ever so slightly to get texture – and we’re done!<\/p>\n

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      Silver EFEX<\/h1>\n

      No photo is complete till you’ve tried shoving it through Silver EFEX. This one looked pretty good with it’s bold textures in the foreground<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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      Well there you go – you can throw your files through any number of filters for many effects.<\/p>\n

      It’s down to taste which is best – I like the black and white, was a bit disappointed with what Viveza gave out for a rare change.<\/p>\n

      The power of Lightroom is that you can get lost, then just “create a virtual copy” and start afresh and see where it takes you<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      WHICH DO YOU LIKE BEST?<\/h2>\n

      Tell us in the comments<\/h3>\n