Touching up

That got your attention didn’t it? But no, I’m not talking about that kind of touching up, more the photographic kind.

Several of you have asked what kind of trickery I’ve used in the most recent photos I’ve sent around. The answer is a little complicated, so feel free to ignore this and just look at the pictures…

The whole process revolves around ‘bracketing’ three (or more) photos with different exposures, then merging the three together. This allows you to get much more detail into the picture, including the very dark and light parts, much in the same way that our own eyes do.

I’ve tried this before using Photoshop, but the results were rubbish. The big change has been using a program called Photomatix. This gives loads of control over the final image. It can give very natural results, but can be tweaked to give 'hyper-normal’ photos that can look 'painterly’. It works great on scenery as above. It’s very good on buildings:

Note that the bloody scaffolding is still there…

This one has no scaffolding:

 

It even can work on wildlife, though movement is a real problem:

Thankfully, Sky doesn’t move very much.

I just took this one in the garden to show how all the detail is brought out:

A big thanks to Geoff for introducing me to this program:

Here’s some recent photos that use this jiggery pockery:

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