Making it better

Recently I shot a quick photo of a street in downtown Kannapolis, NC.  It was a nice little photo, kind of like a snapshot taken with a cell phone while standing on the side of the road.  Imagine my surprise when the Kannapolis Business Alliance contacted me and wanted to use my photo on their official Facebook page.  A deal was struck and the shot now resides as the Alliance's cover photo.

I always thought the shot could be enhanced by a little tweaking and decided to give it a try.

Click on any photo for a larger image.

Here is the original as shot:

Not bad but it has lots of problems, some of which can be fixed with a small tweak or two in any post processing software.  I use Lightroom and Photoshop which are both Adobe products, but I am in no way endorsing Adobe or any other software.

First thing is the street.  It is too bright and draws the eye away from the buildings.  Using the brush tool, I darkened the street.

Now the sky looks washed out and could use a little saturation.  Instead of just saturating the sky, I bumped up the contrast on the whole picture, then saturated the buildings' color.  Then using the brush tool, I saturated the sky even more.  Finally, I brightened the exposure on the whole picture just a little to make things pop.

Next, I cropped the top and bottom slightly to enhance the wide feel of the street.  I also enhanced and brightened the marquee of the theater so the Gem sign stands out a little more.

Still seems a little dark, so I brightened the entire picture and using the brush tool, I brightened the orange sign above the blue car and also brightened the entrance to the theater.

The one thing marring the shot now, are those two cars.

 

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The only thing left is to get rid of the cars.  Using the clone tool, I removed the cars and this is the finished product.

I also removed an orange cone and a TV antenna.

So even if you don't photoshop your shots, always be on the lookout for a better angle or camera setting to use.  In this case, a little more planning, such as waiting for a different time of day, or for the cars to leave, might have saved a lot of post processing time.

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