Those of you who follow EverydayHDR know that my wife and I recently bought a house. This house is awesome, however, it needs some work, not a lot, just really small things. You know like new light fixtures and new light switches (none were grounded). Every once in a while things come up, I am realizing this comes with the blissful joy of home ownership. We have found that we make very frequent Lowe’s trips, maybe every weekend or so.
How does this relate to cupcakes you ask? No you didn’t read the title wrong, we are getting there. On the way to Lowe’s on Barry Road in Kansas City, is this bakery called Glass of Milk Cake Company. You see where this is going now don’t you. You may know of my wife’s love for cupcakes, pies, cookies, well anything baked… scratch that anything sweet, by her blog that I frequently link, Sticky Marshmallows. Now you really see where this is going, every time we go to Lowe’s we stop by the Glass of Milk Cake Company. Their cupcakes and cupcake combos are awesome, we have tried several cupcakes between California and Missouri and I have to hand this category to the Glass of Milk Cake Company. If you are ever in North Kansas City, you must stop here to satisfy your sweet tooth, I highly recommend the Oreo cupcake!
We stopped there last weekend on our way to Lowe’s. Normally I stay in the car with Michael while Sarah goes googly eyed over the delectable treats inside. This time, however, I decided to venture in. We had a very delightful conversation with the owners and discussed many things one of which, HDR photography, imagine that. I try to pass off my burning passion for HDR on everyone of course! The owners showed quite the interest in the art, so I threw some shots together for them.
Tip For The Week:
While tone mapping the images I noticed the cupcakes were looking slightly radioactive, glowing pink, when I say glowing, I mean beaming-eye piercing pink. This was by no fault of the cupcake or their makers, just my tone mapping settings. I liked what was going on around the cupcake, but didn’t like the radioactivity going on in the tone mapped HDR file. I tone mapped it with the radioactivity knowing I could do something in Post to fix it, but at the time I didn’t know what that fix was! After several minutes of dumbfounded fumbling I stumbled upon the Photo Filter Adjustment Layer (the saturation slider couldn’t help this one!). I placed a green photo filter over the cupcake and the radioactivity was subdued, so note to self:
- When a color is radioactive looking, create a Photo Filter Adjustment layer.
- Use the colors compliment as the photo filter, in this case… Green.
- This will subdue the abrasive nature of the original color.
The image above was post processed with my new Actions, Tibits of Awesomeness, that will soon be up for sale in the EverydayHDR Store. I am troubleshooting them now and putting the tutorials together, they will be ready soon, hold your horses!!!
For Blake, it's all about the art and process synergy. He dives deep into complex topics and makes them easy to understand through his outside-the-box thinking so that you can use these tricks in your workflow today!
