You don't post many images, Fernando, but the ones you do are very
special. Wonderful composition, light, etc.!
Fernando Gonzalez Gentile wrote:
> Yes, been there and found that.
>
> Perhaps I didn't try the most convenient option.
> Although I came out with very straight buildings, they showed me one
> single problem: had to crop it badly.
>
As AG suggested in the Zone-10 Forum on my article on perspective
correction, one solution, if you have a wider lens, is to get the camera
level and square to the subject. That will include extraneous stuff,
which you crop out later. That gets everything nice and square from the
start. OF course, it makes for a poor slide and makes the grain in the
scanned image bigger. No free lunch!
It also avoids the problem of objects closer than the main subject
having different perspective distortion. In this image, notice how the
light pole in front of the left building/dome leans further than the
building. There is no way short of major surgery to correct that in PS.
My recommendation is to partially correct the perspective. That requires
less cropping and our eyes correct the rest. Another way to put it is to
correct it out of the range of obvious to more subtle.
At least as significant to me as the perspective distortion are issues I
presume were a result of using UnSharp Mask or a similar tool:
- The grain in the sky looks to strong and sort of unnaturally clumpy to
my eye. This is a common effect from USM on grain in smooth, undetailed
areas like sky. It acts on the grain edges, creating tiny halos.
- There are bright halos from sharpening all along the building/sky
edges. And in many areas where the edge is highly detailed, the halos
result in mottled, disturbed areas even out into the sky beyond the
bright halo.
The solution to both of these is pretty simple. Select the sky area in a
copy the base image layer, make it a mask layer and put it on top of any
layers with sharpening. This leaves the original grain intact and will
cover the sharpening halos and artifacts in the sky area.
Further adjustments to the sky may be beneficial, especially if it
contains clouds, is too light, has too much obvious grain, etc. But it
will still cover the artifacts from sharpening on the layers below.
In my version, I've partially corrected perspective, losing very little
significant image content while making it much less obvious. It it
weren't for the light pole, it would look even better.
I've also softened the grain in the sky while at the same time slightly
enhancing the sharpness in the buildings. All done in one pass with
NeatImage. PS is not the best at everything. Specialized tools for some
things work better. I didn't try to eliminate the grain, just soften it,
but it still has a slightly unnatural mottled look. JPEG compression may
have also contributed to that mottling. The original grain would
probably look better, less mottled, even if it benefited from a slight
reduction.
I also corrected the building/sky edge artifacts in the central portion
of the image. Hand work at 300-400%; tedious and less pure than the
solution above, so I only did part. But worth it, I hope, to illustrate
how much more realistic it looks. That little white edge just screams
"I've been Photoshopped! Look how brittle and edgy looking I am."
http://moosemystic.net/Gallery/Others/FGonzalezG/PdPopolo.htm
Moose
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