23rd Century Paris Final image

This is a great futuristic viewpoint at La Defense, the Paris Business district. To find this take the Metro to Esplanade de la Defence. Exit the Metro on the right side of the Esplanade looking away from Paris or cross to that side. There is a short flight of stairs walking up the Esplanade from the Metro. Take the pathway on the right. This is only a very short distance from the Metro Exit, about 20 metres. Basically follow this pathway straight on, go straight across the square and straight on along another path to the bridge and the viewpoint. There is another bridge before this one. About 5 minutes walk.

All round here is great in daylight for reflections in the buildings but it really comes to life in the evening and night with lights and traffic trails and varying colours. The futuristic bridge in the picture is just another footbridge leading to a building.

The picture was taken with a Tripod with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 1omm. I took single images later creating 3 exposures from the RAW file for a false HDR.

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. http://www.flickr.com/photos/edwinjones/7220046842/

Photoshop

2 images taken prior to the HDR set were brought in as new layers and  layer masks and brush at varying opacities applied to bring in better traffic trails.

Detail brought back in with Topaz adjust with Vibrant preset group, clarity with adjustments including a slight vignette. .

General adjustments in levels and curves to enhance.

Vibrance increased 46 points.

Saturation adjustment layer reds used with a layer mask to increase the reds in the traffic trails.

A second Saturation adjustment layer reds used to decrease the reds in the sky on the far right.

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 46 amount and 46 radius. A mask was used to exclude the effect from some highlights

The healing brush with content aware and clone brush were used to remove 2 large Cranes from the centre of the picture.

The patch too was used to copy and move another part of a skyscraper over an Advertisement hoarding on the building.

A traffic light on a gantry was removed with the clone tool.

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

23rd Century Paris Original

Tonemapped image

23rd Century Paris tonemapped

Final Image

23rd Century Paris Final image

Tip of the Day

The Patch Tool is a handy way to remove an objectionable part of a picture if you have something else adjacent which will blend well. The patch tool in Photoshop may be hidden but it lives in the group which includes the Spot healing and healing brushes. Right click there to show  all the tools and select the patch tool. If you go straight to the patch tool the default selection method is freehand. It may be better to make a selection first with another tool. Then select the Patch tool. The selection you make is of an area the right size to cover the problem. Then just click and drag over the problem. Tidy up any edge problems with the clone tool.

See an example in the before and after pictures above. The Advertisement Hoarding has been replaced with the part of the skyscraper above it.

See the image full size here http://edwinjonesphotography.com/p22407409/h192d44b1#h192d44b1 Click the image for a larger view and click slide show for full screen.

Edwin Jones