This is a picture I took in Chinatown a couple of weeks ago. I would have liked to have had a tripod not only to make the lighting better, but to catch the lights of the cars going by.
The EXIF data shows that I took the picture without really knowing what I was doing. I should have used a higher number aperture and ideally if I had had a tripod I would have used a much longer shutter speed. I don't remember if it was in a mode.
The levels show that it was clipped on both ends. The sky was too dark and made it completely black, and the lightest parts of the highlights were completely lost. When editing this image, I boosted the highlights to 100% so that there was a little bit more detail in the overexposed sections. What I thought made the biggest difference was when I selected a neutral white/gray for the tint and it removed the very orange glow that the picture had. In conjunction with the tint, I also increased the color temperature.
This is the final image post-adjustments. A tripod still would have been preferable, but I do think these adjustments improve the quality of the picture. The white highlights are still distracting, but perhaps less so. The only thing I think got a little worse was the lights on the building at the top. Otherwise, I think it was a moderately successful edit.
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