Dusk in Toronto

From a 30-second exposure, no darks, no flats, and slightly out of focus. Reduced to minimize the focus issue, then enhanced using levels to reduce contrast in mid-tones, Noise Ninja to reduce the noise, and curves to boost the brightness in the low and middle tones. Finally a difference layer was used to remove an overall green tone in the sky background. All processing in Photoshop CS2.

This is the original 61-second exposure for the image which follows (click on 'next') with no enhancements. The image was scaled to 1/3 size to reduce the focus error.

This image was first enhanced in Saturation, following which a noise reduction plug-in was applied and curves were used to increased the brightness of the low- and mid-range tones while reducing contrast in the higher levels. A new difference layer was created and a sample was taken from a region with few visible stars and applied to the difference layer. This gave a very black sky, so the difference layer was scaled back a few percent. The image was flattened and scaled to 33% to reduce the bloated stars. All processing was done in photoshop. See the previous image for the original appearance.