With limited skills

[Phoenix_Jackson]

I have exhausted every technique I know on fixing this for 4 days.

I thought this wasn't a strong image. So I chose it to review on what little I know with GIMP. One of my biggest problems with night shot is that super red light together with that super blue light. I have two images where I attempt going somewhere in between (producing interesting colors) or use black and white (which is mostly recommended when encountering such a problem). But since I personally like this shot, I am not satisfied with such a band-aid. So I took it to myself to do a little heavier editing for the first time.

I used RAW to set the white balance to extreme blue (to produce the right colors of the background) and another to extreme red/orange/yellow (for the right colors of the subject). Masked the blue out with ranged brush and eraser opacity. Overlayed some black on the top-right to get rid of the flare. Soft-light some black at the bottom to reduce that offending light cast and darken the shadows more. Selectively desaturated the blues from the edges of the rail (this is one of the many that took me a long time to figure out).

At the end, the editing isn't too clean. I missed a lot of spots but I'm tired. One of my issues is layer after layer, the colors seem to bleed and I can't figure out how to fix it. I did the best I could and just hope it'll be mistaken for CA. I intentionally left the blues in the background. I might need to tone them down a bit.

Aside from asking suggestions to improve the over-all image (my next step is to figure out whether to crop or not and how if I should), I need to ask if I achieved my goal with this process. Does it look like it was heavily processed? Do the colors seem real enough (I couldn't calibrate my tv)? Was I able to fix those tungsten and mercury lights? And finally, would there have been an easier/quicker technique to do this?

I really like this shot. Please help me.

[IABoomer]

The bit of blue lighting in the background seems out of place relative to everything else in the image.

Obviously the file limitations here prevent you from attaching a RAW file, but could you attach a JPEG of the image as-shot, just for comparison? I'd be curious as to how far things have been pushed.

[Phoenix_Jackson]

Thank you very much for your time. I did intentionally left that blue light hoping the reflection in the water works. But I see that it's out of place and a little too much.

Here's the real shot scaled down to fit the required file size.

[IABoomer]

I see the issue now. If you haven't learned it yet, look into layer masks. It's more flexible than the eraser because you can go back and alter the mask to control the blending by painting back in black or white.

I'm not sure how you were getting rid of the color casts, but by making different layers balanced as you want and masking them with a layer mask, if you find you've missed something, or over-stepped your brush stroke, you can simply swap colors and paint back in the detail.

[Phoenix_Jackson]

I just read a tutorial of Layer Mask. I can already imagine how it'll work wonders on my future learning.

Thank you very much. Is there anything else I need to correct or improve? I feared that my brushing might look too obvious but I tried to stick to the colors's lines to make them appear as sharp as possible, rather than blurring them out.

[bigwater]

I like the final image I think it is a great improvement but alas the blues are a bit much on the sign on the top right and under the rail also. Although I have never used really used GIMP (luckily my choice of education provided me with PS) remember you can also use various shades of gray or lower the opacity of B/W when masking. Can you maybe just grab a selective color and slightly desaturate the blues?