I havent posted anything for a while due to spending most of my - TopicsExpress

I havent posted anything for a while due to spending most of my time working and performing fatherly duties to my first born, who is now a little bundle of trouble at 15 months old! However, Ive just returned from a few nights in the beautiful city of Budapest (our first break from the beast since he was born), so, of course, my camera bag was packed and the area researched before leaving. I had a plan to return home with two special images, both of which included the iconic Parliament Building, which is widely regarded as the most beautiful in the world. Personally, I love the symmetry - it really rocks my world - but its location next to the Danube and beautiful lighting at night add to the romanticism. The images shown here are the before and after of planned shot number 1. The reason Im showing you this is because - as can be seen in the first image - things dont always go according to plan. But, with a little effort, you can still end up with pleasing results. When I joined APC several years ago I was an amateur`looking to grow. And with the help of some of the great people in this group, Ive now reached the point where Im dishing out the advice to friends and other photographers! Of course, Im still learning just like every other photographer out there. And I have a long way to go before I reach my goal of achieving work of the level I aspire to. Nonetheless, after being mortified by the river cruiser mooring up for the night just as Id set up for my perfect shot, I bracketed the image then stomped off in disgust at how anyone could be so inconsiderate! That was it! My dreams left in tatters, as wed already planned our time for the rest of the trip. However, there remained a glimmer of hope; the next night WE would be doing the Danube dinner cruise. Maybe, just maybe... Well, Im sure most of you can spot the obvious problem with that idea: shooting at night from a moving vehicle was never going to achieve the best result. But, undeterred by logic, my camera and tripod took centre stage on our romantic dinner cruise. I bumped the ISO as high as I dare and proceeded to shoot the Parliament building on each of our passes. On review, after straightening and correcting perspective issues, I was actually quite pleased with the results, but something just didnt seem right. And of course they didnt. I was shooting upwards from the river, so after the corrections the building had become much longer and shorter than it ought to be. Enter my initial boat-o-bombed shot! It was taken from the bank and perfectly set up on my tripod. Other than being very slightly off centre, there were no perspective or straightening requirements, making it ideal if I could chop it out and place it neatly into one with water in the foreground! And so the process began. After all my waffle, Id like to explain to those of you who are scared of Photoshop, or just use it (as I did) for cropping and straightening, how I got from image no. 1 to image no. 2. If any of my more experience friends can explain to me how to make the workflow easier, I would appreciate it very much! Step 1: Camera Raw The RAW file conversion part of Photoshop is a very powerful tool and should not be underestimated. I like to make various tweaks her as standard before opening the image in Photoshop. Not shooting in RAW? Do it. Its the next step forward. Why? The simple answer is that a RAW file contains ALL of the data from the image, a JPEG does not. A JPEG is a compressed file, meaning it has basically thrown away any data it thinks it can get away with. Actually, Ive recently started shooting RAW and a low quality JPEG, simply because I have no desire to process many of the images I shoot, so I can save space on my hard drive by deleting many of the RAW files that will never make it past my hard drive. However, Ive notices a considerably difference between the RAW and JPEG files of the same image - to the point where they almost look as though they are bracketed! The key seems that the JPEGs have less contrast and more saturation; they are the ready-to-go image that most people might post on their facebook page - which is exactly why they are worth having. So, I digress! The RAW file conversion I did on this image consisted of a white balance change - from Flash to Tungsten. Its been a source of confusion to me for some time which setting to use when shooting in the dark; theres no Night setting in the white balance! However, the penny has finally dropped (I think), we should use the setting that best describes the light source! (Duh! Do ya think so!?) But the beauty of shooting RAW is that you can tweak the white balance to your hearts content in Camera Raw! Brilliant! I love this setting, as white balance is the setting Im most likely to forget or get wrong when setting up. After white balance, I would normally straighten an image but that wasnt required here. So, the next step was to do a lens profile correction as standard, then take a look at what more I could to with the various goodies given to us in Camera RAW by the nice people at Adobe. In this one I raised the exposure by 2 stops, toned down the highlights by -60, bumped the clarity right up to 100, image in Photoshop. Step 2: Photoshop. After dropping the image into Photoshop, the first thing I did was crop the boat out of it, so that I just had the image of the Parliament building. On closer examination, I still had remnants of the canopies from the boat left in, but I dealt with them later on. Unfortunately, we can only post 2 pics a day, so I cant show you the image I used for the water, but Ill explain what I did later. Next, I sharpened the Parliament building using a High Pass filter and flattened he image before opening the image I used for the water. Now, with 2 files open, I dragged the sharpened image into the image with the water, where it created a second layer in that image. Then, we basically have all the all the elements to complete the image, but I thought it deserved a starry sky, so I imported one and dropped it into another layer. So, with building, water and sky all in separate layers, I had everything I wanted. After positioning the Parliament building neatly in place on top of the water image, I decided it could afford to be a little larger. So, I selected that layer, clicked Ctrl + T to Transform the image, clicked the link between the Width and Height at the top, then increased by 30%. This increases both the length and width by 30%, not just one. Happy with the new size, I moved on to the next step, which was to adjust the water. Having been taken from the river cruise, it was a relatively short exposure and I wanted it smooth and dreamy. To do this I made a selection of the water, hit Ctrl +J to make the selection into a new layer, then ran a Motion Blur filter on that layer, tweaking it until I got my desired effect. Now I had the water and the building looking something like I wanted, but I still had the issue with the canopies from the boat spoiling the bottom of my building. Its only when zoomed in that you really notice it, but it was bugging me - a lot! So, next came the most time consuming part of the process, which was to clone the bottom of the building in the water image into the affected areas in the building image. This, of course, proved more difficult than I would have liked, due to the aforementioned perspective issues. But, with a lot of effort, I managed to take sections - one slice at a time - from the water image, re-size them using the Transform control, tweak the colours using a Colour Balance filter, then place them neatly into the picture of the building. Its not perfect, but Im pleased with the result and Im not sure too many people would ever notice my hack job! So, the next thing was the sky. You may (or may not) notice some bright trails around the top of the building in the first image. These were were birds or bats circling overhead; quite a sight, I have to say, but they had to go. I covered them up by using the Healing Brush tool. Next, I created a selection of the sky by using the Colour Range tool in the Select menu, inverted the selection, then outputted it into a new layer with mask. I then clicked the link between the mask and the layer and then dragged the mask into the layer with the sky in it. This meant the stars just showed in the sky and not the rest of the image. However, I quite fancied a few stars reflecting in the water, so I painted back over the mask with a white brush to bring some of the stars through into the water. Almost done, I still wasnt quite happy with the reflection of the building in the water; probably because the reflction I had was taken from a slightly different angle. So, I created a copy of the building layer, then used the Transform control to flip that layer upside down and then dragged it over the water. I then used changed the blend mode to Lighten and ran another blur filter over this layer to achieve the effect shown. Finally, it was simply a matter of flattening the image! And all in the space of a couple of hours! I really hope I havent left any of the steps out and I hope someone out there as enjoyed reading and (hopefully) learned something from this post - other than the fact of me being a geek, of course! I also think its important to mention that this is the way I have done this. Im not saying its the right way and Im not saying its the way Ill do it tomorrow, Im just saying its the way I did it with the knowledge I had yesterday. Hopefully, one of the more advanced members will have some extra knowledge to help me in future. So the next time I might have an easier path to the end result. Long and short, if youve made it to the end of this post without losing the will to live, thank you. I hope its stimulated someones mind, raised some questions and hopefully some answers! Feel free to ask me anything! Lets help eachother to grow! That, after all, is what this group should be about.