Whilst choosing images to put on the blog, I’m coming across a lot that I edited when I first took the shot, but which I’m not happy with now and this image is a case in point.
The original shot was:
I wasn’t at all happy with the exposure, the darkness of the building on the right which is in heavy shadow and also the distortion.
Version 2: I’ve edited the sky, tried to correct the vertical distortion although still not quite sure it works, and used the Shadows & Highlights enhancement on the building on the right. I also slightly increased the saturation to bring out the rich red colour.
Final effort – gone back to the original image, slightly lightened the building on the right and increased saturation, then run the whole image through the Topaz adjust filter plug-in to even out the exposure and bring out the detail. This has given it a slight “HDR-pop” effect, but I have toned it down quite a lot from the presets!
I think the last version is a bit too much for my tastes – I prefer the second version as on the third the colour / saturation is a little overdone.
Thank you for your comment. I think you could be right. The plug-in gives a very highly saturated result which is not to everyone’s taste and, although I toned down the final version it could perhaps do with reining back a little more. However, I did like the detail it brought out in the image.