Final Image Eiffel Tower Reflection Paris

This was my fourth location of my first full day in Paris. The heavy rain starting in the morning and continuing most of the day eased off by early evening so I headed over to the Eiffel Tower for my first shots of this iconic landmark.

There were still a lot of clouds around at sunset and no great colours. However as the Blue hour started and the Tower lights came on the sky cleared. The big advantage of the rain was the many puddles which made this shot possible. Small clouds came across which were turned pink by the city lights. I took this shot just as the cloud came behind the Tower.

The picture was taken with a Tripod. Taken 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 with the settings adjusted for a realistic look.

Photoshop

Detail brought back in with Topaz adjust with HDR presets, Dynamic Pop 2 settings with adjustments.

General adjustments in levels and curves to enhance with layer masks to exclude highlight areas.

Vibrance increased 41 points.

Brightness layer with layer mask used to reduce brightness in corners and some highlights.

I found the original was too blue and used a colour balance adjustment layer to warm it up generally and another colour balance layer to apply to the path. Midtones sliders were moved towards reds and yellows.

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.

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

Eiffel Tower Reflection Paris Original

Tonemapped image Detail Enhancer

Eiffel Tower Reflection Paris tonemapped

Final Image

Final Image Eiffel Tower Reflection Paris

Tip of the Day

Handy shortcuts to use with adjustment layers. To change a layer mask from black to white or vice versa hold down ctrl and key i. When adding a layer mask the default is white. To change to black hold down alt when clicking to add a new layer mask on the white circle in the layers panel.

Edwin Jones