I'm pleased with the color and detail I was able to pull out of this single exposure image, especially considering the exposure of the original raw file. Let's add another adjustment layer to apply a slight vignette to the image. Let's give the image a little bit of fine-tuning to guide the viewer's eye. Had I chosen to use these filters globally the details would be too much for the sky and water, creating an unnatural HDR look to this scene. A new adjustment layer was created specifically for this.īy using the HDR Structure and HDR Details Boost filters with a mask I was able to paint the effects of those filters just where I wanted it - all along the shoreline and mountain range in addition to the water ripples in the lower left. Now that the color and tonal issues are behind me, it's time to start bringing out the details. By clicking on the Brush Icon to the right of the current layer I can use the Brush to paint in the effect of the HSL filter to just the water where the green cast was seen, protecting the other areas where I wanted to leave the green color like in the trees and tree reflection. Let's start by adding another adjustment layer, then I lower the saturation of Green using the HSL filter. To fix the color cast in the water, I need to do a local adjustment to just the water. The previous color adjustments were done globally to the entire photo. This will need to be addressed next via a local adjustment. But a small amount of the green cast still was visible in the water. By using Curves with the Red Channel, a slight adjustment was made to the curve to help remove the overall green cast by adding red. By doing this it definitely exposed the green cast. I started tackling the color issues (flat color with a green cast) by first adding a new adjustment layer then increasing the Saturation, Vibrance, and Color Contrast. The fact that I had to be so aggressive in recovering shadow detail is most likely the cause of a green color cast that I will next have to address. A small adjustment of the color balance was also made. Heavy use of the Highlights and Shadows sliders along with Smart Tone helped bring out the details I was looking for in the foreground while keeping the sky in-check from overexposing. Next up is making some tonal adjustments in the HDR Basic filter. They can be removed later using a program such as Luminar to erase them. I did choose to leave in the branches in the lower right-hand corner (even though they are a bit distracting). I also like how it produces a classic composition by moving the horizon line further away from the middle of the photo. This allows me to crop out the sun, essentially removing a large problem with this image. By entering a custom ratio of 2:1 while using the crop tool, I am going to convert this image into a panorama. The first thing I am going to do is crop this photo. The foreground is also quite dark, and while I am sure I can bring out more detail there, it might be at the expense of some color shifts and possibly an increase in noise. No matter what I can try, the sun is a lost cause as it's too overexposed. The difficulty with this particular image is that the dynamic range is too large for a single exposure. For best results be sure to check the Tone Mapping option in the open dialog for raw files. Aurora did a great job tone-mapping this single exposure by bringing out some highlight and shadow detail and improving structure, but I will definitely need to do more highlight & shadow recovery in addition to some color corrections. I like to look at a photo when it first loads into Aurora and then analyze it to come up with a plan of attack. Let’s take a look at what we can do with this image. While it is ideal to use multiple bracketed shots (especially when the scene has a large dynamic range like this one has) Aurora can work on single exposures too. The photographer didn’t provide a typical bracketed set of photos for this image, so for this makeover, we'll be using only one exposure in Aurora HDR 2018. Let’s take a deeper look at this file and see what we can come up with. One issue he was having with it was a green color cast. Bill Reynolds provided us with this shot taken of the Bridge of the Gods in Cascade Locks, Oregon.
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