conkerwood

This is one of a number of shots I will post of the Singapore skyline. Its a handheld bracket of 3 (-2.0.+2). It was processed twice in Photomatix to produce two different versions. The first gave me some nice lift for the building and structures but left a halo around the top of the tall background building. The second processing was a little more conservative to produce a halo free and relatively noise free sky. The two pics were the taken into P.S. A layer mask was applied and the conservative sky masked onto the the building of the other pic. The resultant merge was denoised, straightened, cropped and a little boost given to the large and medium details using Topaz detail 3. A little tweak of brightness and contrast and a very small touch of unsharp mask to give the final result. Hope you like it. Peter

All comments welcome.

zero shot

(Download)

Tonemapped

(Download)

andrew.haysom Loc: Melbourne, Australia

I have occasion to visit Singapore for work every now and then, and I love this area. Two questions, what time of day was it that there are so few people, it always seems to be teeming with people whenever I've been there. Secondly - was the sky manually masked? Quite a job I never have very good results when I try that.

Great job as always.

conkerwood

The lack of people was a complete fluke and it is why i grabbed the shot. The thing that drove me mad about Singapore was that there were people everywhere who insisted on moving in what were destined to be HDR shots. Yes the sky was manually masked and in this case it wasn't too difficult, but as i have said before I am a retired man so I have plenty of time on my hands to do the real fiddly stuff. Interesting though, on my screen in full size there is no halo but now I look at the thumbnail there is a very faint halo around the underside of the nose of the tall building. It is weird how halos sometimes show up in thumbnails but not in the full size pic, maybe something to do with compression emphasising small local variations. But I am glad you liked it.

Catch you soon.

Peter

waltchilds Loc: Central Florida

Really nice work here, love the color in the HDR image.

SoHillGuy Loc: Washington

Nice work on the HDR Peter, however I feel the composition of the original photo showing more of the Leading Lines should have been carried over to your HDR. Also the cropping on the right appears a little tight.

Again, nice work on the HDR for definitions.

Jambulee Loc: San Antonio del Mar,Tijuana,Mex

Way to go all the effort was worth it.

BrentHarder Loc: Southern California

Excellent HDR work! Not to overly done, but enhances the building very nicely.

conkerwood

Thanks Gaylord. I wasn't, sure about the crop. If I left it as it was the leading lines were there but to my eye the back building which is the subject lost immediacy and impact. But as you say by cropping I lost the lovely curve that leads to the building. if I was completely truthful I think I would say that I needed to be further left to have taken the shot to get the best out of it but unfortunately I wasn't so I had to make the best of what I took. As always I really appreciate your comments and the fact you take the trouble to look carefully.

Hope the newish new year treats you we'll.

Peter