Courtauld Gallery Stairs Somerset House Final

I took another day trip to London yesterday, Monday 19 August which included a visit to Somerset House. I have been a little into spiral staircases this year so this was another one to bag.

The vast Somerset House was designed by Sir William Chambers and built 1776-1801. These stairs are in the North Wing or Strand Building. This was completed by 1780 and occupied, for its first 57 years, by Royal Academy of Arts. It now gives access to the Courtauld Gallery. 

The picture was taken handheld with a Sony A700 with a Samyang Fisheye lens at 8 mm. 3 raw images 2EV spacing. The ISO setting was 1000 to give a fast enough stutter speed in the dim light. The images were opened in Photoshop first and each image noise reduced with Noiseware Pro and saved as tiffs. 

Photomatix

The 3 images at 2EV separation were outputted in Photomatix fusion with the Natural preset

Photoshop

The -2EV image was opened. This image was then copied in as a new layer. A black layer mask was used to exclude this. Then a white brush at low opacity was used to build up detail in highlight areas.

Topaz Adjust Vibrant Detail 2 preset was used to bring in more detail

General adjustments in levels to lighten a little with a layer mask and brush used to exclude 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 33 amount and 33 radius. A layer mask was used to exclude this effect from some highlights.

The clone tool were used to remove the distracting light from the left of the picture.

A brightness adjustment layer was used to add more brightness.

The crop tool was used to crop a little while straightening

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

Courtauld Gallery Stairs Somerset House Original

Tonemapped image

Courtauld Gallery Stairs Somerset House Tonemapped

Final Image

Courtauld Gallery Stairs Somerset House Final

For licences and prints see Courtauld Gallery Stairs Somerset House

Edwin Jones