Interesting people, places and events
From the category archives:
What a fine morning walk we had with the new Gitzo tripod. This final image is the result of four vertical five-frame exposures, stitched together in photoshop. Cropped. A channel selection used to create a mask, and a couple of blending layers used to, well, undo some of the magic that Photomatix sometimes gets carried away with. Topaz helped provide some nice crunchy detail to the tree line, and a nice gradient vignetted the foreground. Orig post on flickr.
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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!
Tags: Alps, Alpine stream, synopshots, Switzerland, Suisse, Schweitz
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Updated with Giorgos~ generously shared technique for creating that awesomely professional looking drop shadow.
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