Patina (HDR)

The story of this photo:
This was shot at Castle Solitude near Stuttgart, Germany. It was a late autumn afternoon and the light was coming in at a very low angle, illuminating the interior of the castle. Over 30 years of patina has accumulated after the last restoration in the 1970s and shows most obviously on the white interior walls and the wooden frames.

Enjoy!

If you are interested, take a look at my “HDR Cookbook”. It contains some more information on my workflow and techniques.

How it was shot:
> Taken handheld [details]
> Camera: Nikon D90
> Lens: Sigma 10-20mm F3,5 EX DC HSM
> Details can be found here

How it was tonemapped:
> HDR creation and tonemapping using Photomatix Pro 4.0 (Detail Enhancer)
> Semi-automatic deghosting on the lamp
> Saved as 16bit TIF

How it was post-processed:
> Post-processing was done in Photoshop
> Topaz Adjust on the entire image to get back the colors and the details [details]
> Topaz Denoise on the entire image [details]
> Saturation layer on the yellow frames (increased master)
> Levels layer on the yellow frames (more contrast)
> Saturation layer on the lamps (increased master)
> Saturation layer on the white walls (slight desaturation)
> Levels layer on the walls with a circular gradient mask on the bright far end of the corridor to increase the contrast but keep the brightest spots from burning out
> Saturation layer on the floor (increased master)
> Levels layers to increase the contrast selectively to enhance the patina effect
> Vignette effect using a masked fill layer [details]
> Sharpening using the high-pass filter [details]
> Watermarking

Any comments, feedback or criticisms are highly welcome! Thanks for viewing!