Menaggio: Too dark? Sharpen?

[Eduard]

I was on the ferry from Bellagio back to Varenna on Lake Como. It makes an intermediate stop in Menaggio. This image was taken from the deck of the ferry. I processed the RAW file in Lightroom to bring out the colors and slight crop. My specific questions are:

1. Is the image too dark? Especially on the left side?

2. Does the image need additional sharpening?

3. Does the simple framing effect work?

Thanks for any and all comments!

EXIF:
Camera: Nikon D300
Lens: Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S DX
Focal Length: 17mm
Aperture: f/9.0
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 200
Exposure Comp: -1/3

[windrider86]

Love the landscape but the colors seem off to me. I think it may be the sky, being such a brilliant blue is setting the rest of the image off.
Have you considered this as a black and white?

[Eduard]

I used a preset sky effect in LR which "upon further review" looks heavy. I'm going to retry and see what I can do.

I did make a quick try at B&W but the buildings get lost.

Thanks for the input!

[windrider86]

try dodging the buildings to bring them out. May I try it?

[sickBoy]

In my opinion you should try and work on selective color saturation. There is some yellow/red dominance, at least so it seems to mee. But this might be just my monitor.

[denja]

I hope you don't mind, but I thought that Windrider had an excellent idea. I tried B&W using the color channels, and played extensively with the magenta, red, blue and cyan channels. This is the result that I came up with. If you would like me to take this down, let me know. Otherwise, let me know what you think.

Jim

[kencaleno]

What I did:
Ctrl+J
blend mode-screen

regards, Ken

[KrisInCO]

Eduard, I like your composition but the colors seem a little off to me, too, particularly in the sky. It seems the wrong shade of blue...maybe too much saturation? I love what Jim did with your photo to make it black and white! BTW, I've been on that ferry, too....what a beautiful place