[Arthur Macmillan]

...In particular, I like the more 3D look that the first landscape has.  I assume it seems that way because you can see more shades into the shadows and highlights.  There are programs out there that allow for local contrast enhancement.  To me, the effects look a bit like HDR.  The software, in one step, breaks down the image into small pieces and then adjust the contrast to increase the detail instead of adjusting the contrast for the entire image.  It is an effect that one can be used subtly, or or exaggerated.  My photo icon/avatar is such a photo.  I happen to like creating unrealistic special effects, which I know "true photographers" tend to hate.  I hope I can be forgiven for that!  I don't really do it much anymore.  But by the same token, I have done some things that are kind of fun.  I used to live in the flight path of an airport and low flying aircraft would fly over head at night.  I was determined to try to be able to "see" the planes instead of only their landing lights.  Through post processing I was able to get some surprising results!  I don't know the rules for uploading photos.  If its possible, and I can find them, and if anyone is interested I could upload some examples.  I was really good at it for a while, but cannot seem to get the same results any more (lost interest).

 

Anyway, the last part pertains to the link to the Google researcher who was interested in night photography.  It involves many post processing steps.  Whereas the local contrast enhancement was more like, after-the-fact HDR performed on a single frame!  Naturally none of these techniques are even compatible with the modern versions of Photoshop.  I'm sure some of them are well known.  Free plugins like "remove black", and "remove white".  The .dll's are no longer part of Windows (damn Microsoft!)