Before and After: Lake Como Tower

[Paul Lagasi]

I just finished an 18 hour shift, so I will just quickly post this and tonite comment on threads.

This HDR image was in the lake Como region of Italy last year. I used my 10-24mm lens which caused quite a distortion of the tower.

It looked ok but I decided to try and use the Transform tool in CS5 to straighten it (the new CS6 has a special feature for doing this but I haven't gotten it yet)

This is a very powerful tool, helps straighten horizons (in merged images), fix curves due to wide angle lenses..etc.

I also removed objects from the image as you can see, brightened up the colors...thanks for looking

[Dennis Bishop]

Great job in reducing the distortion. Maybe even more impressive is how well you replaced the roof on the right. That doesn't look like it was just a straightforward Content Aware Fill. It looks good with the brighter colors, but I'd also like something between the two versions with an Old World feel closer to that of the original in places.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Paul, I like the way this turned out. I think I would reduce the bright pinkish glow above the mountains - it looks a little unnatural. (I just realized that you removed that roofline - great job on that - how did you do that?).

[Paul Lagasi]

Thanks Cheryl and Dennis...the roofline was removed using clone tool. I'll try and work on the pink color...

[Indranil Sircar]

Paul, I like the perspective. I would also suggest a round of NR on the sky. Excellent processing!!

[denise ippolito]

Paul, Great job with the processing , I second Indranil's suggestion regarding the noise reduction.