Arc de Triomphe Arch Symmetry Final

Back to the past with this shot of the Arc de Triomphe.  For anybody wondering how you get to the Arc through the wall of traffic going round it there is a pedestrian tunnel under it. My Tripod does not do straight up so I put the Camera on the ground at the centre of the Arc and fired off sequences for HDR with a wireless shutter release. It was a bit trial and error getting the Camera lined up just right and I still had to do some editing later to straighten the image.

The picture was taken with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 10-20 wide angle zoom at 11mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing for HDR. As a first stage each image was opened in Camera Raw and White Balance altered to custom setting of 2600 k to remove the yellow look from the street lights. Then the RAW files were again opened in Photoshop using an Action and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs.

Photomatix

Outputted in Photomatix to Fusion default which produced a more natural look. Click the Camera name top right on flickr for this image for Exif details and the settings used.

Photoshop

The crop tool was used to straighten the image. See Tip of the Day below.

Detail brought back in with Topaz adjust with Vibrant preset group, detail strong 2 with some highlight areas excluded from the adjustment with a layer mask.

With a near perfect centred histogram no changes were needed for a change to either levels or curves

Brightness adjustment layer used to decrease brightness in some small highlight areas. A black layer mask was used

Brightness and contrast adjustment layer used with a layer mask to decrease brightness in the highlights.

Second Brightness and contrast adjustment layer used with a layer mask to increase brightness in the clouds.

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 62 amount and 62 radius. A mask was used to exclude the effect from the clouds and some highlights.

During the earlier crop and rotate some small areas were left outside to get in more of the picture. The Clone Tool was used to fill these in with adjoining detail.

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

Arc de Triomphe Arch Symmetry Original

Tonemapped image Fusion Setting

Arc de Triomphe Arch Symmetry Photomatix Fused

Final Image

Arc de Triomphe Arch Symmetry Final

Tip of the Day

There are a number of ways to straighten an image in Photoshop. Image, Rotate and Arbitrary and guess an angle. Ruler tool, draw a line eg along the horizon and click straighten. However the one to look at today is using the crop tool. First draw a crop taking up most but not the entire image. For accuracy get one line of the crop outline near something like the horizon you want to be straight. Move the mouse to just the outside of a corner and it will change to a double headed arrow. Drag here to angle the image to suit. Expand the crop to get in the parts you want to include. To include more move the crop outside the image and later clone in details. (This works for plain not complex picture areas) Then complete the crop.

Edwin Jones