Cattedrale di Piazza Armerina

I love it when I find a hidden gem in my archives. I have been spending a lot of time perusing old photos in lieu of actual travel and stumbled across this panoramic view of the Cattedrale di Piazza Armerina watching over the town below.
With a bit of love using current technology, I was able to take a pleasant snapshot of the Cattedrale di Piazza Armerina and turn it into a work of art that I’d be proud to hang in my home.
The “Before”
Believe it or not, here is the photo I started with:

And here is is with a few quick tweaks in Lightroom:

Much better already, right? Here is what I did:
- Set White Balance to Daylight
- Auto Tone
- Enable Lens Corrections
- Transform > Auto Upright
- Crop to 16:9
Creative Processing
Once I had my base image looking pretty good, I moved on to creative edits in Luminar including a sky replacement and tone adjustments to make the city glow with warm afternoon light.
If you’d like to see exactly what I did, go over to Facebook, join the Skylum Photography Group (I’m one of the admins) and watch me edit the photo in a live recording.
Problem Solving
After I finished my creative edits, I zoomed in for a close look at the image and noticed a couple of issues.
- It wasn’t sharp
- The image lacked enout pixels to make a large print
Sharpen the Details
First, I worked on the sharpness with Topaz Sharpen AI. This software borders on witchcraft it is so good!
Before Topaz Sharpen AI After Topaz Sharpen AI
Increase the Resolution
Next, I addressed the image size. The original photo was captured with a Canon Rebel (the original one) with a whopping 6.3 megapixels. After fixing the distortion and cropping it to a 16:9 aspect ratio, I was left with a paltry 3057 x 1720 pixels. Not terrible, but not enough to print large.
After running the photograph through Topaz Gigapixel AI I was able to double my resolution and now I have an image with 6114 x 3440 pixels – plenty for a nicely sized print with BEAUTIFUL quality.

Get to know the tools
I am in awe at how this photograph turned out and I couldn’t have done it without the amazing tools I have in my photo editing toolbox.
- Lightroom Classic – my home base for image organization and basic edits
- Luminar 4 – my go-to toolbox for creative editing, including AI Sky Replacement (enter ANGANDRIEUX at checkout to save $10)
- Topaz Sharpen AI – an almost magical tool that can rescue images that are just a bit of out of focus (enter ANGANDRIEUX at checkout to save 15%)
- Topaz Gigapixel AI – A lifesaver for photos I captured years ago on low megapixel cameras (and for upsizing scanned film photos). (enter ANGANDRIEUX at checkout to save 15%)
Questions?
If you have any questions about this photo or my editing process, please let me know in the comments below or contact me directly. I’d love to hear from you!
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