Re-edit friday (also the 100th post)

It is friday and the 100th post of the blog, this can only mean I am re-editing a picture. This was going to be a video but it didn’t record the audio so i will do it the basic way and type my ideas here.

The original picture is of the Reichstag in Berlin. The image was taken from the side not the front. It is a panorama and was stitched together in photoshop. From looking at the original image in photoshop there were a lot of things going on and it took a bit to decipher my original edit. From what i could see i had created the panorama and then converted the panorama into a smart object used this to reduce noise etc and added adjustment levels on top.

The image is quite contrasted and on first viewing ok, when you zoom into print size the image looked horrible.

For me one of the major issues is the sky the clouds look blown out on the left with the brightness turned down.

First i went into the original image and deleted all the adjustment layers and also deleted the adjustments in the smart object and then saved the image. This stripped down version was the image after the original stitch.

This is another reason why i like using smart objects and non destructive editing.

The Image once striped down showed me where a lot of the problems lay in the image  The base image is very flat, there is detail in the sky but to preserve it you may sacrifice the toning for the rest of the image.

Once the image was saved, I imported the image back into Camera Raw to start the re-edit. I was most concerned with protecting the sky, at the same time as being able to get the best out of the building . I did this by making a quick exposure adjustment and setting the black and white points before using the gradient adjustment tool to protect the sky.

In the adjustment tool I lowered the exposure and the highlights to keep as much detail as i could.

I switched back to the main adjustment panel and then compensated the white point adjustment.

Most of the details were in the midtones. I used clarify to adjust the midtone contrast and raised the shadow detail to help as well. I also used the lens correction to compensate some of the distortion in the image as well as correcting the perspective as well. I added some capture sharpening and reduced the noise in the image.

Once in photoshop i wanted to first rescue the sky. These clouds were blown out in the middle and had no detail.

I duplicated my layer selected the whole sky using the magic wand tool and normal selection tools. Once selected i inverted the selection and deleted the lower portion of the image. Having just the sky as a separate entity meant i could make adjustments without thinking about the building. I could have used a mask but in this case i opted not to.

Using the selection tool again I selected the blown out area of the clouds and used content aware fill to fill the area. Content aware fill uses the detail form the right side of the sky to fill in the left. I then cloned and patched the new area of sky to make it seem more natural. Sometimes when you use Content Aware fill it creates patterns in the filled area.

I duplicated the sky and added a small blur.

I continued editing the image using adjustment layers separately for the sky and the rest of the image. I added a warming filter to reduce the coldness of the image.

Finally I sharpened the and saved the image.

I think the image overall looks better than the original edit. I am still not 100% happy with the sky and will most likely go back and edit just the sky again. I much prefer the tones in this image and the contrast is still there though more subtle.

Let me know which image you prefer.