Bell Tower, Acoma Pueblo, New Mexico, USA

[rpcrowe]

The Acoma Pueblo which is about 50 miles West of Albuquerque, New Mexico is said to be the oldest continually inhabited locale in the United States. This image was processed in Topaz Adjust.



More images and history of Acoma Pueblo at http://rpcrowe.smugmug.com/Travel/AC...968981&k=izTpK

[Snarkbyte]

Nice composition of a wonderful old structure, Richard. Is it just me, or does anyone else see a dark halo around the top and left edge of the tower?

[rpcrowe]

I would expect that this is an artifact from the Topaz Adjust. I sometimes miss this sort of stuff on my new monitor and didn't notice it until you mentioned it.

Here is the image without the Topaz processing...



There is a story that the Spanish Bishop of New Mexico required the Acoma Pueblo Indians to give young boys and girls into slavery in return for the bells that adorned the tower. There is a graveyard behind the church with empty graves for those young indians who never saw their home again...

[Goldcoastgolfer]

I like the detail you have in your first image. Is there any way of getting rid of the halo?

[Rob Douglas]

I too like the detail of the first image. Is it possible to control the halo effect or is that an unavoidable byproduct of the process?

[Snarkbyte]

I would expect that this is an artifact from the Topaz Adjust.

Interesting. I too prefer the detail of the original image, so it would be worthwhile to try to remove the halo.

There is a story that the Spanish Bishop of New Mexico required the Acoma Pueblo Indians to give young boys and girls into slavery in return for the bells that adorned the tower. There is a graveyard behind the church with empty graves for those young indians who never saw their home again...

There are many stories about Sky City. On your website, you mentioned the drunken priest who was thrown from the cliff... the rest of the story goes that, before they threw him offf the edge, the Acomans reminded the priest to look to right when he was about halfway down, as the view was beautiful at that point.

[FrankMi]

I would expect that this is an artifact from the Topaz Adjust.

The halo is an unexpected result of using Topaz Adjust? Interesting, and thanks for mentioning it. I use Topaz Adjust so I'll be looking for it in case I need to correct for it. Now that I look at it closer, there seems to be a faint white halo on the other borders. Usually, you can just blend back in some of the original but in this case you would need to follow that with some soft, low opacity brush strokes to retain some of the sky detail enhanced by Adjust.

Richard, do you recall the preset in Adjust you used or was it a custom setting? I'd be interested in seeing if I could reproduce this on my system.

[Geoff F]

For me, Richard, a slight tweak with LCE on the second image would give a more natural result.