From the Financial District, about an hour ago:

Harbour Plaza.jpg
 

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Lotsa blue, with a dash of green - in any case, a frigid palette dominates. This city, in the throes of winter, can a bracingly austere sight.
 
Can't say I did that when editing; though I just look at these buildings and tell myself they're just keeping in line with the colours of Toronto's city flag. It's less upsetting that way.
 
I think that is just the white balance/temperature. It looks a lot "cooler" than normal. Not sure if this was done intentionally or the camera's auto-white balance got it wrong.

I use a Canon Powershot; it's good for up-close photographs, but it's garbage when I zoom in from a distance (especially in crappy weather). But yes, I did play around a little much when editing. Here's the raw unedited version for one of those photos:
IMG_1634 2.JPG
 

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You can certainly go the route of auto-white balance but it's only one route. I think it's much more interesting to see how different people stress different things in contemporary photographs. Some are clearly using lens correction, some are pushing the clarity way up, or the blacks way up- or both - for that ultra-crisp, surreal look. And some are using custom presets made by themselves or downloaded from other sites, for looks resembling classic film stocks of the past. I'm just grateful we're not all using the same strategies - I appreciate a healthy mix of styles as opposed to the tyranny of any one single trend.
 
I raise the brightness, darken the shadows, up the black point and increase saturation (but only a little bit because it looks fake really fast). I just use my iPhone 6+ I don't like carrying my actual camera with me.
 
High contrast is problematic in construction shots where much of what you want your audience to see is in a shadowed area, so I tend to lighten the shadows so that people can see detail in them. Not so light that the darkest areas are not still black—you need black somewhere in the photo for it to not look flat. I tend to only add saturation to the degree, again, that it might bring more clarity to a photo, and not so much that the pic looks garish.

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