Looking Up Les Invalides Dome Paris Final

The tip of the day is about making multiple selections on an image. See the end of this post

This was taken in Les Invalides, a complex of buildings which includes a large domed Church which is also the Tomb of Napoleon. This is a picture of the domed roof. The magnificent paintings on the Dome were completed in 1705. 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

The first step was to copy back in the minus 2EV image as a new layer. The move tool was used to align the images after reducing layer opacity. Then a black layer mask was applied to the minus 2EV layer to hide it. This was brought back in with a white brush on the windows round the dome to bring back more detail. Selections were made to precisely confine the brush strokes to the windows.

Detail brought back in with Topaz adjust with vibrant presets group with detail 2 preset with adjustments. Some areas were slightly excluded from the effect by applying Topaz on a duplicate layer with a layer mask.

General adjustments in curves to enhance with a layer mask used to exclude highlights.

Brightness was increased overall with a layer mask and brush used to partly exclude highlights.

Vibrance increased 23 points.

Saturation adjustment layer master used to decrease overall saturation with a layer mask used to exclude the paintings and central dome from the adjustment.

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 partly exclude the effect from highlights.

A slight crop to centre and some tidy up with the 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.

Original at 0EV

Looking Up Les Invalides Dome Paris Original

Tonemapped image Detail Enhancer

Looking Up Les Invalides Dome Paris Tonemapped

Final Image

Looking Up Les Invalides Dome Paris Final

Tip of the Day

In Photoshop you may sometimes want to make a number of different selections in the same picture. An example is the various windows in the Dome of the picture in this post. Normally if you make a selection and then go on to make a second one the first selection (dotted ants look) will be deselected. The solution is to hold down the shift key when you make a new selection(s) This works with the various selection tools but unfortunately not with the pen tool

Edwin Jones