Glass Shard La Defense Paris Final

Today’s Tip of the Day is about when in the processing to do any necessary cloning. See end of this post.

This shot was taken at La Defense the modern Paris Business District. This is a taken from a footbridge where the edges of one of the Towers come together in a sharp edge right next to the bridge. I angled the camera aiming for a diagonal from corner to corner for more drama.

The picture was taken handheld 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 was brought back in with Topaz adjust with Vibrant preset group, Detail 2 Preset to bring in a lot more detail.

General adjustments in levels and curves to enhance and increase contrast

Vibrance increased 39 points.

A brightness layer with was used to increase overall brightness with a layer mask to exclude some highlights.

Saturation adjustment layer yellows increased and blues decreased for an overall warmer look.

Colour Balance adjustment layer sliders moved towards yellows and reds in midtones and highlights to reduce the blue look more and give a warmer look with a layer mask to exclude the skyscraper to make it stand out more.

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 63 amount and 63 radius. A mask was used to exclude the effect from some highlights.

Clone tool used for some tidy up.

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

Glass Shard La Defense Paris Original

After Photomatix Detail Enhancer Tonemapped Method

Glass Shard La Defense Paris Tonemapped

Final Image

Glass Shard La Defense Paris Final

Tip of the Day

When you have an HDR image processed in Photomatix or other software you will need to do further editing to bring back detail and enhance contrast. At this stage if you notice anything distracting which needs to be removed with the clone brush or other tool do not do it now. This should be the last step in the process after even sharpening. The reason? The brush strokes made if you clone at the start will be made obvious by any later enhancements. By doing it at the end you can choose the right opacity and hardness to the brush so it blends perfectly in the final image.

Edwin Jones