City Hall Curves and Spirals FinalCity Hall Curves and Spirals Final

At Open House London in September I took numerous photos of City Hall so I thought it worth processing another one. This shot was from high up looking down at the start of the spiral stairs which gradually widen out as the domed shape of the building widens towards its base. This was another shot with my Samyang 8mm fisheye lens which is just right in this building.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Samyang Fisheye lens at 8 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix 5 Beta using Fusion Interiors preset.

Photoshop

Topaz Adjust Vibrant Dramatic 2 preset with adjustments was used to bring in more detail.

Levels and brightness contrast used to brighten the interior with layer masks used to exclude the sky and highlights.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

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 20 amount and 20 radius. A layer mask was used to apply this effect only to parts of the interior.

A vignette was applied using the Elliptical Marquee selection tool, then inverse to select the outer edges with wide feathering and brightness reduction.

The healing and clone tools were used to 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

City Hall Curves and Spirals OriginalCity Hall Curves and Spirals Final

Tonemapped image

City Hall Curves and Spirals TonemappedCity Hall Curves and Spirals Final

Final Image

City Hall Curves and Spirals FinalCity Hall Curves and Spirals Final

Edwin Jones