Happy Holidays from Julian
Liked how they had this mountain town restaurant lit up for the holidays. It looked very inviting after hiking all day. (Though I was a little concerned about the empty parking spaces.) One 5 sec exposure, CS5 adjustments, color balance, saturation, little bit of Topaz Simplify, there was just one faint star in corner, so I added a few more.
Brendan, I can usually eat like a horse when I get finished with a hike and this would look very inviting indeed! Love the starbursts and the holiday decorations. I kind of wish it weren't dead center but I don't know what you had to work with. I like that you minimized the road with darkness. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...
I love the nice blue light of the sky with stars and the warm inviting lights and colors of the building. I don't mind the placement of the building but I wouldn't mind a slice off the bottom.
After looking at Denise's comment (and while Judy was posting hers), I played around with changing the composition a bit. It incorporates both of their suggestions, as it turns out.
In order to move the building, I added canvas on the right. Starting with a golden rectangle overlay pinned to the upper left corner, I moved the bottom right corner (maintaining the golden rectangle proportions) until the peak of the roof was at the horizontal divine proportion line. That left extra space at the bottom, which I cropped, and the empty space on the right. To fill the empty space, I used a rectangular marquee to copy the right amount from the right side of the original. Then, I did the same thing to paste in a copy of part of the tall tree on the left. The Darker Color blend mode took care of the light part of the sky below the tree, and I moved it the tree lower so the former left edge of the image didn't show. (I didn't want it to be at the same height, anyway.) The final step was to extend the light area in the parking lot to the right with a soft, low opacity brush.
Oftentimes, pictures of lighted buildings at night have a sky that's too dark. I really like the way your sky complements the colors and shows the silhouettes of the building and trees. Adding the extra stars was a good touch.
Thanks you guys, appreciate your comments & suggestions.
Dennis, I like your solution for the repost, and thanks for teaching us how you did it. I'll have to keep the golden rectangle in mind for the future. (I remember you posted it earlier)
I used the top of the building to level, but wondering if I should have used a line along the walkway below or not. Is there a rule of thumb regarding that?
I think the best thing to do in leveling is to pick the line that's most likely to be level, and that's going to be a judgement call. If, for some reason, the roof and walkway aren't parallel in your photo, I've gotta think you chose the right one. With the lighting, people are more likely to notice the roof not being horizontal.Originally Posted by Brendan Dozier
I try not to be obsessive about using the golden rectangle. In this case, it seemed like a good way to figure out how far to extend the canvas so the building wouldn't be centered. And -- because there wasn't really much happening in the dark area below -- it seemed like a good idea to crop at the bottom of the rectangle.
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