One of the nice things about doing HDR imaging is that a final result, with all the tonal variation can be further enhanced with the use of technology. For this short and simple ”How To Do Stuff” post, I’m working with this image which was produced using five shots with Nik HDR Efex Pro and Adobe Photoshop.

After getting my image to the final color point with all the realistic detail and tonal range that I wanted, I moved it into Nik Silver Efex Pro 2 for a simple monochrome conversion.

Sometimes simple is best as with this image. And since the color version has very little color variation, the process of converting the monochrome into a split toned image as a variation of the original is pretty easy.

• Doing the Splits – The Beauty of Camera Raw

After converting my monochrome image to 8 Bits/Channel and saving in .jpg format, I opened it in Camera Raw. Then, after selecting the Split Toning tab on the right, I set the sliders for a Highlights = Blue and Shadows = Yellow combination. I played around with the Balance and came up with +30 as the best variable to balance the tones.

With this split, I could get an almost deep winter, realistic version of the original. OK, just use a little imagination.

The nice thing about this process is that the results can be exactly what you want. I’ve included other examples below. These are a little more hmmm! Yes, Artistic license but I think you get the idea.

• Doing the Splits – Camera Raw with a Single Image

The shot below was produced using the same technique with only a single raw image. I simply dropped the saturation, added brightness, did a little toning to bring out the shadows and add texture to the clouds (easy to do in the Camera Raw processor) and applied a blue and red split tone.

The last image is the product of very slight enhancement in Photoshop. Starting with the above split toned image, I worked with Hue/Saturation to get the two colors a little more toward the realistic side and then used the dodge and burn tools to deepen the sky and lighten the building. Almost real with fall foliage, huh?

Equipment used:

River - Nikon D100 with 28-70mm f/2.8 lens, 35mm(effective 42mm), f/22, ISO 400. Bogen/Manfrotto 3221 tripod with Manfrotto MH054M0-Q2 ball head.

Mansion - Nikon D700 with 20.0-35.0 mm f/3.5-4.5 lens, 35mm, f/16, ISO 400.