Chris Froome Tour Excitement Final

This shot was taken on Stage 11 of the Tour de France 2013. This was on the first individual Time Trial from Avranches to Mont St Michel. The location was at Courtils which was the 2^nd Time Check about 8 miles from the finish.

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Sigma 28-200 zoom at 200mm. The image was opened in Camera Raw and 2 additional images were created at +2EV and -2Ev  for a “false HDR” with each image having Noiseware Pro applied.  A Photoshop action I had saved was used to create the extra images automatically. The images were saved as tiffs. 

Photomatix

Outputted in Photomatix to using Tone Compressor tonemapping and Photographic preset with adjustments for a fairly natural look.

Photoshop

In Photoshop Topaz Adjust was used with Clarity preset with a layer mask to apply it only to Extra detail was brought in using Topaz adjust, Vibrant preset group, clarity preset. A layer mask was used to apply this effect only to Chris Froome to make him stand out.

The Crop Tool was used to straighten.

Levels were used to enhance with a layer mask to exclude the crowd.

Brightness was increased on the rider only using a layer mask.

Saturation reds was used to bring down crowd excluding Chris with a layer mask.

Layers flattened before going on to sharpening.

Duplicate layer Noiseware Pro and standard sharpening with Unsharp mask.

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 55 amount and 55 radius. This effect was again applied only to the rider for a final extra boost.

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

Chris Froome Tour Excitement Original

Tonemapped image

Chris Froome Tour Excitement Tonemapped

Final Image

Chris Froome Tour Excitement Final

For Licence see Chris Froome Tour Excitement

Edwin Jones