Paris Panorama

I took this photo of the Champs Elysees from the viewing platform on the top of the Arc De Triomphe in Paris on the 13th July 2008 when I was doing the tourist thing with friends.A day of very remarkable coincidences as it happened.I just rediscovered the image this week.It was taken with a modest Canon G7 and is surprisingly sharp and detailed.It does show some distortion but I have not corrected this in the processing as that would mean losing the edges of the frame.

I converted the original jpeg file to black and white using Nix SilverEFX software which I have just purchased as part of the Nik Creative Collection being offered at a big discount by Google- the new owners of Nik.I have had a lot of fun playing with the software over the last couple of days but I am trying very hard to not give into the temptation to start using creative filters and effects more than absolutely necessary as I could end up with many of my photos looking like all the other art filtered photos which are all over the web.You can do many of the effects in Nik Creative with Adobe Lightroom 4 (except the HDR which is really excellent in the Nik collection) but Nik Creative lets you do them much more easily.

If you own Adobe Photoshop,Lightroom  or Apple Aperture and want to purchase the Nik Creative Collection for $149 go to Nik Creative and strike whilst the 70% discount applies.It only works as a plug -in for these programs so you cannot use it as a standalone application.
The original of this shot was taken in colour but I reckon that it works so much better in B&W.