Lloyds of London Fisheyed Final

This was taken with a Fisheye lens looking up the side of Lloyds of London on the left. On the right is the Willis Building and in the distance between the two is the Gherkin..

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Samyang 8mm fisheye lens at f8.

3 raw images 2EV spacing for HDR. Opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs. The Plus 2 EV image RAW file was used to create two more images at +2 and +4 above the +2 image to get the full dynamic range in the shadows.

Photomatix

Outputted in Photomatix to Detail Enhancer. The shots were processed in Photomatix a second time using Exposure Fusion.

Photoshop

The Detail Enhancer file was used as a base. The fusion processed file was copied in as a new layer. The new layer was then excluded with a layer mask and a brush used to bring it in 100% for the base area of Lloyds which was darker and had more noise and artefacts on the Detail Enhancer file.

Detail was brought back in with Topaz adjust with vibrant presets group with Vibrance preset with adjustments. Some areas were excluded from the effect by applying Topaz on a duplicate layer with a layer mask.

Vibrance was increased by 70 points.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

A duplicate layer was first used with dust and scratches filter applied to a selection to the darker areas under Lloyds to reduce noise there.

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 37 amount and 37 radius.

Tidy up with the clone brush.

BEFORE AND AFTER

Below are the Before and After images. First the middle of the 3 exposures. Then the tonemapped image and then the final result.

Original at 0EV

Lloyds of London Fisheyed Original

Tonemapped image

Lloyds of London Fisheyed Tonemapped

Final Image

Lloyds of London Fisheyed Final

For Licence see Lloyds of London Fisheyed

Edwin Jones