Natural History Museum Entrance Columns Final

This is a shot of the entrance to the Natural History Museum in London taken on a visit last month.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 10mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing for HDR. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.

Photomatix

Outputted in Photomatix to detail enhancer. Click the Camera name top right on flickr for this image for Exif details and the settings used.

Photoshop

Detail was brought back in with Topaz adjust with Vibrant preset group, detail 2.

General adjustments in curves to enhance.

Vibrance increased 12 points.

Saturation adjustment layer blues used to increase blue saturation in the tiles above the door.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

First duplicate layer Noiseware Pro and a little sharpening

Second duplicate layer with mask to apply extra sharpening and contrast with low amount and high radius using Unsharp mask (Clarity Effect) The settings were 49 amount and 49 radius. A mask was used to exclude the effect from some highlights.

Next yet more detail was added using the High Pass filter at 14 on a duplicate layer and an overlay blend mode.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the original, then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Natural History Museum Entrance Columns Original

 Tonemapped image Detail Enhancer

Natural History Museum Entrance Columns Tonemapped

 Final Image

Natural History Museum Entrance Columns Final

 Edwin Jones