Les Invalides Altar Final Image

This was my second day in Paris and after the Pantheon I moved on to Les Invalides which includes a large domed Church which is also the Tomb of Napoleon. This is a picture of the magnificent Altar. The first pictures of this came out way too yellow so I dialled down the WB in Camera to get a more realistic look. As with so many places Tripods are not allowed to be used inside Les Invalides .

The picture was taken handheld at ISO 1000 to get a fast enough shutter speed 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 brought back in with Topaz adjust with HDR presets dynamic Pop 2 settings with adjustments including a slight vignette. Some areas were slightly excluded from the effect by applying Topaz on a duplicate layer with a layer mask.

General adjustments in levels and curves to enhance.

Brightness and contrast were increased overall with a layer mask and brush used to partly exclude the outer corners and highlights.

Vibrance increased 32 points.

Saturation adjustment layer blues decreased a little

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 43 amount and 43 radius. A mask was used to partly exclude the effect from highlights.

Some tidy up with 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. It will be noted that a lot of the improvement  comes with the Photoshop editing.

Original at 0EV

Les Invalides Original

Tonemapped image Detail Enhancer

Les Invalides Altar tonemapped

Final Image

Les Invalides Altar Final Image

Quick Tip of the Day

When using any brush and many tools such as the clone tool and healing tool  in Photoshop you will often need to increase or decrease the size of the brush or area affected. Do this quickly and easily by tapping the right square bracket on the keyboard to increase the size and the left square bracket to decrease the size.

Edwin jones