Orton and Fractalius at King Harbor

I think I overblurred this one in the Orton process. I'll explain.

I started with 6 exposures selected out of 15 I shot. It was dark so my exposures were long. The drawback of this is that the boats and everything else on a Sunday evening was moving. So I picked the best ones out of each EV in lightroom and generated the HDR in photomatix. I tonemapped it there also, using similar steps mentioned in other posts below and brought the resulting 16 bit TIF file into photoshop.

I tried shadow highlight in photoshop first but got a lot of banding which sometimes happens so I only used levels and noiseware before the Orton. This effect is based on Michael Orton's sandwich technique.

The digital version starts by duplicating layers in photoshop, then duplicating the top layer again. I then change the blending mode on the very top layer to Screen. I merge down and duplicate this layer again.

Now I take the top layer and sharpen and sharpen edges using those basic photoshop filters. (This step by the way was added thanks to the tip by Chris Anderson) I change the blending mode on this top layer to multiply. I then go down to the second layer and use a Gaussian blur. This creates the sandwich which for the most part is pretty saturated which explains some of the blue tint in this image. The other reason for the blue is my custom white balance setting. This white balance setting on the camera has nothing to do with the real world anymore as it was set a few weeks ago in the late afternoon with a grey card.

I had the Gaussian blur setting at 15.8 radius which looks like it was too high. This varies by image.

I finish this part off by flattening the image. Now it's ready for Redfield's Fractalius.

I first duplicated layers again and ran Fractalius with the preset of of Glow 80. I'm new at Fractalius so I just went with the preset. I then copy the entire result and paste it into a mask for that layer. This allows the white to remain and the rest of the image to show through.

Here's the result:



Since I don't really know Fractalius yet this image the other one I did earlier looks like a drunken spider laid his web all over the Harbor. I've seen some nice work with Fractalius, but I haven't learned how they do it yet.

Addendum - I went back and cut the blur in half and replaced it on flickr.

2nd Addendum - The blur still appears to be too much - I'll probabloy cut it in half again if I do more of these.