Tone Map: HDR Efex Pro

Notes on Tonemapping

The main goal in working with this single-image HDR is to process twice: once for the sky and background, and a second time for the face of the building. To get the sky and background I’m looking for, I moved the Method Strength slider to 34% and adjusted the Tone Compression to a high setting. I stopped adjusting it when I saw enough detail in the cloud area. Additional drama was added by increasing the Structure, and tweaking the Contrast. I then decreased the Warmth in the image and added Saturation to get a good blue color for a starting point in the image (although this could be adjusted later in Photoshop). I also slightly decreased the Exposure and increased the Whites a little bit. Since I’m not really crazy about the way the sky and background are looking here, I’m not going to even bother processing it a second time for the face of the building.