Edinburgh Castle

About:

Edinburgh castle from Princes Street Gardens in beginning of autumn.

 

Location:

Edinburgh, Scotland, UK

This image is also geotagged

 

Technical stuff:

Exposure: 1/40 sec at f/11 at -2 1/3 EV

Taken with: Nikon D90 and 18-105 mm f/3.5-5.6 at 21

 

This was a real b*tch in processing, I shot three bracketed shots to make an HDR, but the results were disappointed especially on the tree on the right with the bright sky behind (I masked the sun there). After processing I could always see dark patches in that part of the sky. So I took another approach:

- my -2 1/3 EV shot had the best range to start with, because the sky was the area that needed some color and this one had the most colordetail there.

- In photoshop created three levels layers with all a different mask

- L1: Sky: mask created with color range, shadow input level to 57 and midtone to 0,82 this gave me the blue sky I wanted

- L2: castle + rock: this was a little too dark (obvious off course of the dark shot I took), highlight input to 221 and output to 3..252

- L3: trees and foreground: this was too dark too and needed some extra light: highlight input to 210, midtone to 1.09 and output to 9..255

- A 4th layer was created to boost the saturation of red/magenta on the redish tree on the right

- in Lightroom: recovery 100 --> got all the blue I needed and some extra detail in trees.

- still in Lightroom: added clarity, sharpening and vibrance (I know I can do that too in PS, but I like the Lightroom way better)

 

 

Usage:

All my images are copyrighted, if you want to use it for anything contact me first.

 

Any comments, criticism and tips are welcome.

Done