Chrysler building in NYC help needed

[mavericksupersonic]

I took this shot of the Chrysler building in NYC over Memorial day weekend while walking down Lexington Ave. I really like the composition, but I am not an expert in post processing and could really use some help. I think this photo could be much better. I have performed some cropping so far to get it to the view I like. I took a stab at playing around with the levels and brightness/contrast but was not happy with the results so I have posted the un-edited version here. I would appreciate any advice. Please feel free to post your suggestions or edits and what steps you peformed.

I have photoshop 7 to work with. BTW, this image has been resized for the web and has been compressed to JPEG.

Thanks in advance, Marc

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e344/mavericksupersonic/LexAve1_cropped_web.jpg

[Palladium]

http://img211.imageshack.us/img211/8289/lexave1croppedweb15jd.jpg
about 5 min workup...
My approach...

- was to dup the original layer 3 times & name them original, left, middle, right.

- straightened each of the new layers ( left, middle, right ) with the lens correction filter. For the left layer I was working on the left buildings as a guide - for the middle layer I used the Chrysler building and for the right layer I used the buildings on the right as my guide.

once I was satisified with how each layer looked I then erased the parts of that layer that I didn't want to show. eg. this resulted in the middle layer with only the area around the Chrysler building & the right side layer with only the area around the right side buildings, same with the left layer.

- merged layers

- duped new image layer and darkened it up alittle by changing it's mode to multiply (about 15%) and masked out some of the areas I wanted to highlight (eg. bright area, trees branches, mailboxes, silver poles, etc. )

- smartsharpened 150, .02, 0

;)

somewhere along the line I took out the light

[mavericksupersonic]

Palladium,

Thanks for the info and posting your edits. I had straightened the whole image just based on the Chrysler building and didn't even notice that the other buildings weren't straight. Now that you point it out, I think it makes a big difference. I kind of liked the light at the beginning but it did seem strange just poking out from the left side of the picture.

I'm going to try to implement some of your methods and see how it comes out for me. I think i'm also going to try to isolate the sky to a new layer and then work on it separately from the buildings and road.

Marc

[re1ex]

What i felt was that this picture was lacking contrast. So I applied a USM filter of 50/55/0 and that already bought out the building in intrest out.

Also the sky was alittle blah. Then I did 2 selective color layers. both making cyan and blue have black 100%. these 2 layers had a mask to only include the sky

Picture suffers heavy jpeg compression, did the best i could with what you supplied.

Jon

edit: after looking at it again, i might have over done the contrast.... but you get the idea, it just needs some 'pop'

[Palladium]

here's another punched up alittle...
http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/7916/lexave1croppednew6gd.jpg

[sageone]

Here's my take. I duped the original layer. Used the magic wand/magnetic selection tools to isolate the sky. Added a blue to white gradient then used the render clouds tool to make couls. Then I bumped down the opacity so the clouds didn't look too fake. Then I isolated the two distant buildings using the same selection process and bumped up the levels to give them a bit more contrast.

[sageone]

Two more using the virtual photographer plug-in (http://www.optikvervelabs.com/) for cs2. The first is using a b&w, dreamy look. The second one, a 60s type coloring. Enjoy.

[mavericksupersonic]

Wow,

Thanks everyone for the posts and the suggestions. You have all given me some great examples. I'm working on this as we speak and I will post my updated version as soon as i finish (hopefully sometime soon). There is a ton I need to learn about photoshop, but the examples above give me a ton of motivation to get working on it.

thanks again.

[mavericksupersonic]

Well I just finished my updates. It took a really long time as I was learning new PS functions as I went along. Here is the final. I am pretty happy with it and think it looks much better than the original. Thanks to everyone for their suggestions.

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e344/mavericksupersonic/LexAve_for_web.jpg

[mavericksupersonic]

and one more, just for fun

http://i42.photobucket.com/albums/e344/mavericksupersonic/LexAve2_selective_colors.jpg