Tube Mice to Infinity Final

<b>The Shot</b>

This is the DLR, Docklands Light Railway, platform at Bank Underground Station, London. The station is named after the Bank of England above ground but could not be more different. There is an especially clean, vibrant and futuristic look to the platform.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Samyang fisheye lens at 8mm and f5.6. I took 3 pictures for HDR. However in the end used just the middle image to create the additional images as the difference in the movement of the train in the 3 images was too great.

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix fusion natural preset with adjustments.

Photoshop

More detail was brought in with Topaz adjust with HDR presets group with Detail preset with adjustments. I decided to apply this effect only to the Platform by applying Topaz on a duplicate layer with a layer mask.

The image was improved with an adjustment layer of Levels with a layer mask to exclude highlights.

Vibrance was increased by 28 points

Layers flattened before going on to 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 40 amount and 40 radius. A layer mask was used to remove this effect from the highlights.

Tidy up with the clone and healing brushes.

Note –For the upload image for flickr I created a grey border round the image to provide a better presentation than the new flickr deep black. To do this in Photoshop after finishing and resizing the image go to image – image canvas. Change cm to px from the dropdown. The figures to enter here are the size of the border. For this image I entered 100 px for width and height. Experiment for the best look. For the border colour against Canvas Extension Colour choose from the basis list in the dropdown or click the box to the right to choose a custom colour. I would suggest grey or white. Your picture will now have more space around it in the Photo Page and stand out more if it appears in search.

Note that the example image below includes the additional outer grey border which I have as the default for this Blog,

BEFORE AND AFTER

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

Original at 0EV

Tube Mice to Infinity Original

Tonemapped image

Tube Mice to Infinity Tonemapped

Final Image

Tube Mice to Infinity Final

Final image with Flickr border.

Tube Mice to Infinity Flickr

For Licence see Tube Mice to Infinity

Edwin Jones