Co-op

Don't even know where to start on this photo...guess from the beginning.

My parents came into town today. I spent the afternoon with them, and eventually we ended up at their hotel. I was going to go up to and take some night shots in the mountains, but that didn't work out. Since I already had my camera gear with me, I decided to take some shots at the hotel.

I did some of the hotel, and since we were right next to the Bozeman Co-op, I hoped the street and took some of that. I did HDR triple bracketed shots, this means I did shots at -2, 0 and +2 exposure value. I was using Av mode in my camera at f3.5. So my camera decided what I should use for a shutter. I used ISO400.  At first I just did a single framed shot, but then I grabbed a shot of the sky in case I wanted to make it a pano later.

This is where it gets really tricky to explain. I spent so much time editing this, I do not remember all the steps. I'll explain the best I can.

In Lr, I got the bracketed shot of the Co-op, and threw it into Photomatix. I made a couple versions of it in that, and then went into Lr and made another HDR version. HDR is made out of a raw file by lowering the highlights and raising the shadows. I also bumped the clarity and contrast a hair.

I took all three of these versions in Ps and began compositing them. I combined the first two by use of layer masks and blending modes. I believe I used that luminosity blending mode for the top layer because it had a lot of contrast, and then painted on the layer mask where I wanted that contrast. I then combined those two layers, which I had merged, with the last layer in a similar fashion. I simply painted over areas I wanted on a layer mask to make them show up.

Next..what did I do next. I think....I brought it into Lr and did some more adjustments. Split toning, clarity, shadows, that sort of thing. I let it sit for a bit, then decided it needed more work, so back to Ps it was. I duplicated the layer and applied a massive blur to it, then set it to overlay. This made some cool lighting effects and glow effects. I made a layer mask and painted in the areas of glow I wanted at a low opacity.

I then used the normal method of sharpening with a high pass filter (I've explained it multiple times in the past couple posts) and then back to Lr it was. More of the same adjustments and then back to Ps to add the sky in from another photo. I made a layer mask from the base photo of the building (actually a duplicated I ramped up the contrast on to make it easier for Ps to read the edges) and then applied the mask to the sky image. I had to clean this up a bit, and it's not perfect, but it's good enough for my purposes. I could fix it later if I wanted to print it big or something.

Back to Lr, decide it's need sharpening after noise reductions, another highpass filter sharpening layer later, and I was done. Yay! Except wait...shadows too dark.

Ps again. Duplicate layer. Raise shadows. Layer mask. Paint. Lr. Split tone a bit. good. done.

I really like how the photo turned out, it was a pain so much fun to edit, no really it was fun. It was like playing with a bunch of effect to see how it going to turn out.

Anywho, here ya go.

Blogger...why do I even use you. You can't display a photo properly! what is this... Fb page please to see it.

See you tomorow...