The pizzeria around the corner!

[golympio]

Here's the picture:


Now, how I took it:

Camera: Canon 50D
Lens: Tokina 11-16mm @ 11mm
f/4.0, ISO 200

After asking the owner of this pizzeria just round the corner from my home, I set up shop right in the middle of the road and quickly took 9 shots with exposure times ranging from 1/8s to 10s. It was about 9pm in August, so there was still some light in the sky, even though we can see some stars.

I pulled them all into Photomatix 3 for some HDR goodness, and here's when the fun starts.
Back into Lightroom:
- First some cropping
- Adjust levels

Then into Photoshop:
- Removed the unwanted clutter: electrical cables flying around and tied to the walls, etc.
- Created 2 copies of the background layer,
- On the topmost layer, applied a high pass filter with a hard light blending mode to bring some details back,
- Heavy noise reduction on the second layer, then applied a Topaz Adjust filter with a very heavy hand, and pulled the opacity back to just where I wanted,
- Then I flattened to a new layer (CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+E), made a new copy, applied a little gaussian blur with screeen blending mode to add some glow without losing too much detail.

Back again into Lightroom:
- Some color adjustments
- Sharpening

Any comments are welcome!

[DigUpHerBones07]

I love all the bright colors, it looks like a really cool pizzeria.

[JohnT]

Great work on this shot. I knew you used Topaz the minute I saw the shot. I use about four of their filters and love the effects that can be drawn out on a picture to give it something extra.

[Cojaro]

That little green car really adds a good bit to this picture. I like it

[golympio]

Thanks! And it looks even better on a VERY large print

[Evn1ngStar]

Very nicely done, it almost has a Norman Rockwell-ish look to it, just needs a few people at the table to complete it.

[evader]

That's amazing...I love it!

[CourtJester]

I really like this shot and totally agree with the green car, that's the first place my eye went to.

[kgb224]

Outstanding work.

[cbells]

love the colors and love the green car! Awsome photo thanks for sharing!