.cynlee

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Doug (Snapshooter87) suggested that I tell what I did to an image. To be honest, by the time I'm through fooling around, I don't remember everything, but basically, I sometimes crop, but always do a curves or levels adjustment, noise removal if needed, constrast adjustment and then on from there. I have an add-on suite put out by Topaz labs that does some nice and some funky things and I have Artizen's HDR plugins. On this image, I did do a Natural LDR adjustment. You can always edit the degree to which it affects the image afterwards. I also did a micro detail adjustment in Topaz Adjust or Detail and I did a Painting in bold colors with Topaz Simplify. This was in CS5. I also did a copy of this with softened edges. I layered that layer over the sharper image and erased on the top layer all the areas that I wanted to stand out and be sharper than the softer areas and then I merged the layers. I took the image to PSPX3 and did some minor cloning of a streak I didn't like, sharpened and added a small frame to kind of simulate a window. I couldn't do it exactly this way again. That's why I sometimes end up with about 6-10 different versions and then pick the one I like best. If I were to do this all correctly, in CS5 I would use Smart Objects or save all my edits as a PSD document. This is a storefront in Northampton, MA, taken in December 2011.