Today's Image: "HDR Sky"

Welcome back to Impacted Images. This is today's image overview, which features my latest photograph, "HDR Sky."

This is the untouched HDR image after being combined from five pictures in Photomatix Pro 4.2:

The images were taken with a Canon 7D using 1/1000th, 1/500th, 1/160th, 1/100th, and 1/50th shutter speed. I used ISO 400 and f-5.6 since the sun was already setting behind the houses.

In Photoshop, I first cropped in more tightly to focus attention on the sky and not the grass in the foreground. I then used a Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer and set the Brightness to 30 with the Contrast to 75.

Next, I used the Nik Color Efex Pro 3.0 plug-in and chose the Tonal Contrast filter. However, after adding the Tonal Contrast filter, the grass had too much contrast. I used a mask to paint the lower half of the image out, leaving the contrast only in the sky. I next added another Tonal Contrast layer to just the grass for a more vivid image.

I then used Alien Skin Exposure 3's Color Film filter and used Kodak Ektachrome 100. I slightly adjusted the Contrast, Midtones and Highlights slider inside Exposure 3.

This is the final image:

Thank you for reading Impacted Images. More image overviews are coming soon.