My goal was to get this as close to what I remembered seeing as possible. I took the original photo standing against a railing on the Harbour (Tsim Sha Tsui side), trying to hold my breath long enough to get a steady shot. No tripod and a lot of Chinese people bumping into me.
I took the photo last summer but didn't do any post-process work until this month, I'm still trying to figure that out. I'm not even sure exactly how to describe what I did, it's just trial and error really. I feel like the longer I work on a photo the less I can tell when it's "done", so I'm always phobic that I'm taking the processing to far. I'd appreciate input on whether this was too much or too little, whether there were better ways to fix it than I used, and what I could do to make it better. Thanks!
Before:
After:
Photoshop work done:
-- added slight S-curve mask to bring out the midtones
-- bumped up saturation (interesting point, I used the rainbow spectrum towards the center of the photo as a guide -- too much or too little saturation and I lost a lot of the colors.)
-- Added temporary brightness adjustment layer to make it easier to see the skyline, used burn to darken the sky and get rid of the light halos around buildings.
-- Used dodge tool on light reflections in the water