I like the first one, but would have preferred it levelled. Looks pretty good to me

Now there is something new I learn again. You see? I always take in something new as time progresses from this forum. I had been struggling at times controlling the tiniest details of highlights and clippings etc thinking that if the image crosses these boundaries then it will not look good. Now John you just made me realise that I shouldn't go overboard with these things and little clippings where it cannot be avoided are still ok.

Thank you again for that lesson learnt.

Having said that, Mark, thank you also for the input. If you hadn't mentioned I wouldn't have noticed that the conversion from PSD to JPG is doing that. This is why I like to post into the forum so experienced members like you all can lead me the way and point to certain things.

So the issue again, is this normal when converting from PSD to JPG? Do I need to keep an eye on it and is it image dependant?? Up until now I would just finish editing and then just flatten the image and forget about it, assuming that its as it was in PSD. What's the general rule? What do you do?

Many thanks

That's a pretty decent shot Tim. I just notice a bit of noise, what iso did you shoot at?

Mark, I think you are right, I hadn't checked after converting from PSD to JPG. Only after you mentioned it now I realise that my PSD file is no where near the clippings that its showing.

So why is it doing this? When working with the PSD file this is what I was taking a lot of care in controlling and then when I was happy with the image I flattened it and didnt look back. And now you mentioned the moment I check it it lights up like a Xmas tree, and this wasnt there with the PSD file

Oops sorry people, perhaps I ought to mention that this shot wasn't taken yesterday. This is one of my previous shots back in April when there was a huge moon craze going around here in the forum and myself along with some other members were quite involved in getting some shots of the moon. It was back in April. So today I dug out the RAW file again and decided to have another crack at the post processing hoping that my skills have improved a little bit with time.

Sorry didn't intend to mislead you all. Although the moon phase yesterday would have looked more or less like this one

sorry doesnt work for me. If I saw this on a postcard or magazine while on a visit to London I would make sure not to go and see it as a point of attraction.

Try straighforward shot of the london eye without HDR please and give me back the visual beauty of that lovely landmark before I cancel my next trip to the south of the river

Thanks Mark

What I tried to do with this one was to limit all the settings to keep the highlights becoming overblown. Inclusive sharpness. With ever setting I was manipulating I kept coming to the levels to make sure it wasn't blowing off because it was too easy to just overdo it.

Interesting then if you open the final jp in your editor if the levels would show clippings. Did you try it?

Thats the trick I use and I stopped the slider right at the point that clippings were about to start so limited it there before the blown ups appeared.

That's why I wanted to know more about this as I had used this method then why did the blown ups still appear? Is there something else that I need to take into account while doing this to avoid highlights blowing up?

Thanks for that Chris

The original RAW file I shot doesn't have blown highlights. If there is any then I must have overdone with levels, hence me mentioning it

Thanks

Mark, that's precisely one of the things I wanted to know. I went to great efforts to not let the highlights get blown up while PP also, so in my editor I couldn't see any highlights blown up.
Is it only me or I am missing something? I do have a calibrated monitor too with the spyder 3

thanks