It seems every month that more tools are released for photographers to help them with enhancing their photos. The trick is not to over do it and make the shots look natural. I personally work to make my shot look like I saw the scene when I was there. Undoubtedly, the final product is closer to my perception of what I saw opposed to what the scene really looked like. I’ve reprocessed some shots from Yosemite National park. Some were taken on October 2007 and others in September 2010. All were reprocessed using tools from NIK Software. Almost all were run through Color Efex Pro with added brilliance and warmth. One new tool I just got is NIK Software’s HDR Efex Pro for processing High Dynamic Range (HDR) photos. HDR is where you take multiple exposures of the same scene using a tripod. Some of the shots are underexposed so that the highlights have detail, and some shots are overexposed so that you have details in the shadows. Then the shot are combined to make an overall photo with a full range of tones. I never really got the hand of other HDR software or Photoshop’s built in HDR processing. All I can say is HDR Efex Pro rocks! If you’re a photographer and want to try your hand at HDR I highly recommend HDR Efex Pro.

Here’s a shot I took of Half Dome in Yosemite Valley. It was processed using three varying exposures. It was a cloudy day and this shot is close to what I saw that day. The cloudy sky is probably a little more dramatic that it really was but I like the look.

This shot is from Yosemite Valley that I took in October 2007. We were leaving the park and stopped one last time as the sun was setting to get a shot of El Capitan.

This shot is of the Chapel in Yosemite Valley. I wanted the shot to look a little different and used NIK Color Efex Pro’s Tonal Contrast to boost the image. I like how it came out.

This shot is in Yosemite Valley and another view of Half Dome. My wife Carole and I were simply walking around the village along the road. Crossing a bridge we saw this scene. A beautiful expression of fall color in Yosemite. Shadow and color detail brought out with NIK Viveza and Color Efex Pro.