Extended Sunset Lanzarote Final

I have had a BW 10 stop Neutral Density filter for 6 months but have struggled with the exposure and finding something good for the foreground.

I have a free App on my Android smart phone called Exposed into which I feed in the exposure reading without the filter and it then calculates the correct reading with the filter. This theoretical correct exposure seems to always come out too dark so I now increase this by at least 50% at sunset to allow for fading light.

The picture was taken on a Tripod with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 20 mm over 82 seconds. I created a false HDR from the original RAW file with Plus and Minus 2EV images created.

This was taken on the Playa Grande beach Puerto del Carmen, Lanzarote at not far off high tide.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix fusion method Natural preset.

Photoshop

The Plus 2 EV image was opened in RAW and exposure increased to plus 4EV. This was then pasted in as a new layer and excluded with a black layer mask. A brush at low opacity was then used to get a touch more detail and lighting on the rocks.

Topaz adjust was used with vibrant presets group with setting sun preset to substantially increase the colours in the sky.

General adjustments in levels and vibrance to enhance.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

Layers flattened before going on to noise reduction.

Duplicate layer Noiseware Pro.

Second duplicate layer with mask was used to apply dust and scratches filter at a high level only to some high noise levels in some shadow areas.

The healing brush and clone brush were used to remove sensor dust marks.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Extended Sunset Lanzarote Original

Tonemapped image

Extended Sunset Lanzarote Tonemapped

Final Image

Extended Sunset Lanzarote Final

For licences see Extended Sunset Lanzarote

Edwin Jones