Shakey Loc: Traveling again to Norway and other places.

Oh! Well done,Tatia. The sky, the snow on the rooftops, the buildings not lit all look fine. The street lights area is a little weak and lacks impact. I agree it looks natural but your aim is to please a photo editor. This means the image has to have a WOW factor. If it is not there naturally you have to introduce it.
You made such a good effort I'll give you five thumbs this time. (But keep in mind the need for impact!)

Revet Loc: Fairview Park, Ohio

Thanks for the input. In my first try I added light to street lights and buildings and it looked terrible. In the posted version I only used the dehaze filter and the basic develop sliders in Camera Raw (mostly adjusting the White and Black point) so I really didn't add any light that wasn't already there. Unfortunately, I have very little originality and I was only trying to copy the first person's version which also was pretty bright. Next time I will do what I think should look good! Thanks for the challenge!!

Shakey Loc: Traveling again to Norway and other places.

Mike, you did everything right, almost. The sky and buildings are fine. The street lights area is bright and full of impact. However, you let the snow on the roof tops get away from you. The snow is pale blue. I guess you were so pleased with how the image came together you overlooked it. I'll give you five thumbs for technique. (But always scrutinise your image to check everything before you post your image.)

SalvageDiver Loc: Huntington Beach CA

Hi Shakey,

I went back and looked at the snow and didn't see anything wrong with the snow. So I pulled in the image into PS>ACR and using the color sampler, checked the RGB values of the snow areas. Sure enough, the blue channel was about 10% higher than the other 2 channels. Hopefully it's just time to recalibrate my laptop monitor and not my eyes.

The great thing I like about these challenges is having another pair of eyes critically reviewing each of these images in a friendly environment. It's making me think much more critically about each of my own images. Thanks for all your time you put in helping us in this forum.

Mike

(Download)

SalvageDiver Loc: Huntington Beach CA

In the spirit of Jim-Pops, here is my basic approach to this edit. I'm also a user of LR and PS, so I'll try and keep this fairly generic. I only used Lightroom for this edit.

The first edit was to increase the brightness until I could see the image. I felt the images was taken with the camera slightly off angle, so I straightened the vertical and horizontal lines a little and cropped the edges just to remove some extraneous stuff along the lower left edge.

For my global adjustments, I increased the brightness by 0.6 stops, increased the whites by 55% and completely reduced the blacks to -100%. No changes to the highlights or shadows. Still not satisfied with the pop, I increased contrast by 30%. Now it was looking much better. I made no changes to the WB, nor clarity, vibrance or saturation. The blues were especially high, so in the HSL panel, I reduced the blue saturation by -50% and reduced the purple and magenta by -100%. No other changes to HSL. I sharpened the image by about 30%, but using a mask, only applied it to the highlights.

The colors and exposure seemed to be correct, but the image was still flat. So, I burned in some areas of the highlights. I used the radial filter for all of this. I increased the exposure and yellow tint and applied it to each of the major lights on the street. I then added a highlight on the ground under each of those lights. I used a large radial filter covering the entire street area, including the building faces, increasing the exposure by another 0.4 stops and added an additional small amount of contrast. I also added yellow light to the light at the bottom left of the image and brightened to light in the walkways at the bottom left and bottom right of the image.

The white LED lamps, mid-right, were casting light and shadow on the building but they didn't appear to be on, so I brightened the white lights. I also brightened ground and snow underneath the lights using the radial filter by just increasing exposure without adding any yellow.

At this time I was fairly satisfied with the overall image except for some noise. So I applied a small amount of noise reduction using Topaz Denoise. I exported the image to a jpg and sRGB as the color space. Finally I submitted the image to Shakey's Advertising, LLC to be reviewed and scrutinized by their photo editing staff for their critique and feedback.

Mike

R.G. Loc: Scotland

I'm curious about the green colour on the towers. The street lights on this side of the towers don't look as though they would be giving off a pronounced green light - white is more what I would expect. But you haven't criticised anybody for having a strong green tint there, so presumably it reflects reality?

And presumably the rooftops didn't have a purple or magenta light shining on them so those colours are camera error.

I agree that my edit came out a bit strong on yellow. The main reason for that is I echoed Lightroom's auto White Balance and Tint corrections (but didn't go so extreme). I sampled some of the rooftop snow on the left away from the street lights, but I think that night-time light is inherently blue so it's a mistake to try to completely remove blue, and I went too far right with the WB slider.

Shakey Loc: Traveling again to Norway and other places.

My pleasure, Mike. and thank you for your kind comment.

Shakey Loc: Traveling again to Norway and other places.

Your comment about the color of the towers is correct, R.G. In daylight they are a dirty stone colour. At night they get light from street lights which are some distance away. This means they look less than imposing with a gray/green tint. This is the reason I was happy for members to accentuate the green, as everyone did. Thanks for your heads up, R.G.

Tatia Loc: Nv

Thank you Shakey for the generous 5 thumbs. I did have an idea that you would comment on the lack of WOW as you call it. I'm happy the rest is OK. I've noticed that most of the people here use PhotoShop or Lightroom so there explanations on there workflow doesn't help all that much, but I'll get by. I'm using Luminar and I like it.

Shakey Loc: Traveling again to Norway and other places.

Tatia, I have not used Luminar but I'll take a look. I hope it has a selection of tools and adjustments. If it does you'll get by for sure. Don't be concerned about Photoshop or Lightroom, members use all kinds of editing programs. I use GIMP and Affinity Photo, GIMP may be old school but I get by

Tatia Loc: Nv

Yes Shakey, Luminar has tools and plenty of adjustments. Is this version more to what you are looking for?

(Download)

Shakey Loc: Traveling again to Norway and other places.

That is pretty close, Tatia. The image lacks contrast. Add a little more contrast (Brightness and Contrast adjustment tool) and/or Exposure adjustment tool. You will see a significant difference with either or both, if you need to push it further. Having done that you may need to brighten the street lights area without changing the rest of the image. Make a selection around it with a feathering of 35 to get a smooth blend.

K7DJJ Loc: Spring Hill, FL

Three clicks in Photoshop raw