In my recent photos from Back To The 50s car show in St. Paul, MN, I found a combo of editing techniques that I really like and a lot of people have been asking, is this HDR?

Well it isn't traditional HDR techniques using multiple photos or specific programs for HDR.

Here is the original image I am going to cover:



to turn it into this:



First, I shot this shot with my Canon Rebel XTi, using a 10-22MM Wide Angle lens. ISO of 100, sometimes you can get away with slight tweaking of ISO 200 but any higher than that and you'll get way too much noise.

First thing I do is open the photo, using CS3 it should open Camera Raw automatically.

First I change the White Balance & turn up Recovery. WB I set to Cloudy, gives it a nice yellow tint, brightens up the picture. Recovery I turn up to the max, tones down the highlights some and recovers some washed out areas.

After WB & Recover:



Next I turn the Clarity & Contrast up to the max. Clarity is the initial sharpening, and Contrast, well it adds contrast. I know it looks bad now but just wait, it'll work out:



Next I turn up Vibrance and Saturation a little bit, usually around the 10-15 range:



Next, Fill Light, I turn it up to bring out the details in the shadow areas. Don't worry about the rest of the photo, just watch the shadow details:



Last thing I do to finish off the work in Camera Raw, I turn the exposure down, and adjust the Fill Light accordingly. Play around with these till they get the right look. Watch for haloing:



After I got it looking right overall, I click open image and it opens the image in PS. At this point the only thing I always do, is smart sharpen. Around 3-6 pixels, and 60-90%, play with it but watch the noise, to get your final result:



This method works great to make some great looking B&W photos as well.