After Before Week 48

After a couple of week’s missing this challenge, I’m glad I was able to enter again. Unfortunately, life is crazy, so I can only show the beginning and final images, but I will tell you what I did to get to the after.

In the spirit of the name of the challenge, here’s the after:

And now the before:

To get from the before to the after, my process was a little different than usual. The original image started as a jpg, so no RAW conversion this time. First, I increased the exposure. Then I bumped the contrast. I also adjusted the highlights to reduce the brightness around the steam puff from the train. Finally, I cropped it in much tighter to remove the uninspiring sky and to draw focus more to the really cool train sign.

To see more examples from this challenge, visit After-Before Week 48 Challenge.

Click the image above for rules on joining the fun!