Before and After

This was a little experiment using several camera and PhotoShop techniques.  I shot this house about 7:00 am, just before any sunlight was on it.  I was trying to avoid any harsh shadows.  I shot 3 images, 1 under exposed, 1 over exposed and 1 at the proper exposure.  I also shot the images in both jpeg and RAW.  The above image is the middle exposure in jpeg.  The camera was set at Auto White Balance, aperture priority.  The camera had a bit of trouble with the White Balance in the flat light.  I adjusted the 3 RAW images to Sunlight/Shade, which warmed up the image significantly.  I then took the 3 images and merged them using HDR.  This merges the details from all 3 exposures, creating an overall well exposed image (hopefully).  A slight amount of saturation increase and the house looked pretty good, but the sky was still white.  Then I removed the sky and replaced it with a sunset image from last August.  Then, a little bit of wet reflection in the driveway covered up the messy asphalt.  It's too bad that the landscaping was horrible.  We still had lots of snow around, and the vegetation was still tied up and brown.

So the below image is the final result.  If this was used as a magazine cover, you could lay text over it to cover up a few things and you would have a snappy cover shot.