Rainbow Tower La Defense Final Image

The Tip of the Day is about adding copyright to your Photos Exif details. See end of this post.

This shot was taken on another visit to La Defense, the modern Paris Business District. Among the skyscrapers there are a number of sculptures including this one. It is a fair bit smaller than the skyscrapers but still a good size, at a guess 40-50 ft tall. It is an empty cylinder clad with these coloured pipes making up all the colours of the rainbow. It can be found near the Esplanade de Defence Metro Station. The image was taken from right next to the tower.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 12mm. 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 Fusion adjusted settings. 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 Vibrant preset group, Boost preset to improve detail and colour with some highlight areas excluded from the adjustment with a layer mask.

General adjustments in levels and curves to enhance.

Vibrance increased 48 points.

The -2EV image was brought in as a new layer and applied with a layer mask only to bring back detail into the cloud.

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 image was flipped to put the cloud on the right which I decided gave a better look.

BEFORE AND AFTER

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

Original at 0EV

Rainbow Tower La Defense Original

After Photomatix Fusion Method

Rainbow Tower La Defense Fused

Final Image

Rainbow Tower La Defense Final Image

Tip of the Day

Easily add a copyright notice to your photos Exif details. This will not stop a thief who will remove it However it gives formal notice of ownership and if you include contact details such as email or a website it might even get you a sale. Changing Exif Info usually requires special software but you can add details easily in Windows Explorer. In Windows 7 right click the picture, scroll to Properties, in the window click on the Details tab. Here you can add text for Title, Subject, Tags, Comments and Copyright. I do a standard notice with the copyright symbol, my name and website and the year and just copy and paste it in. In XP the procedure is the same but instead of details fill in info in the Summary Tab

Edwin Jones