Phill’s rules:

1. Fill in the form at www.phillprice.com/index.php/2009/02/21/edit-my-photo-pro… and I’ll send you the full straight out of the camera Canon RAW file – or a JPG from that original raw.
2. Edit it as you like
3. Post it somewhere – be it a photo sharing site or your own blog
4. Send me a link to say you’re ready
5. Bask in the glory that you did better than me

Photo is licensed under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/

So, how did I edit the photo? I imported Phil’s RAW file into Lightroom. From there I created 4 virtual copies of it. Then for each virtual copy I adjusted the exposure so I ended up with photos at +2, +1, 0 (Phill’s original), -1 and -2 exposures.

Then I exported the photos into Photomatix using their Lightroom plugin. Tweaked the HDR till I was happy with the results and then exported the file as a TIFF.

Next I opened the TIFF into Photoshop to try and cleanup the bright spot that is along the left hand side of the subject. I was able to recover some of the color after the HDR conversion, but not all. And since I’m not that skilled with restoring photos I decided to live with the results. I then saved the TIFF again.

Opened Lightroom back up and imported the new TIFF. Applied some Clarity and Contrast adjustments and exported the photo back out of Lightroom.

Last step was to clean up some of the noise that got generated creating the HDR. I opened up my Noiseware Professional application, applied adjustments till I was happy and voila, we have a final product.  I might spend some time to continue tweaking the photo to get back some brightness above the structure and recover that bright spot on the left but wanted to publish this before tomorrow’s deadline.

Here’s the Original Photo