Coffe Shop

¡Hola Kadir!
I love these kinds of photos: people relaxing, finding refuge in places filled with light that spills outwards.
I think you've been a bit conservative with the exposure: for my taste, it could have used at least one more stop of light.

Hello @Dane,
If Mr Hopper was here he would be delighted, very easy with the clone tool to brighten very selectively.
Cheers James

Thank you for your kind words. Here’s a slightly brighter and edited just a little bit differently version. I must admit I generally prefer darker captures but I understand they’re often considered underexposed.

Hello @Daneland
Thank you for your kind words. Here’s a slightly brighter and edited just a little bit differently version. I must admit I generally prefer darker captures but I understand they’re often considered underexposed.

Hope you don't mind me saying that this lighter version spoils the whole atmosphere of the piece. If I may and only with your permission do a screencast showing how to brighten the café remove the upper left highlight and make the pavement just that little bit brighter.

Regards James

Feel free to edit it as you like.

Hello @Daneland

Here is the screencast
There was a video here, I was using FreeCam 8 to record the screen it didn't do it very well, very good at not picking the Ps tools up! So I looked at lots of other free offerings only to find that the Snipping Tool in Win11 does a superb job. I'll do it again tonight.

I do say this with the greatest respect to you and to anyone else who reads this. Out of camera files and negatives are just the start of the photographic process. Hands under the enlarger light and Ps can without very much effort turn the eye to what you the artist want the viewer to see.

The medium doesn't matter it has always been thus.

James
PS this is what I did shame the vid won't open in the message

II watched part of your video at work and thanks for taking the time to give advice. I mainly use LR Classic for my edits and I’ll be happy to watch it again once you upload it. Regarding your edits, I find the WB of the highlight area a bit too cold but otherwise it’s fine.

Hello @Daneland
I did try with the snipping tool it's actually not very good sadly. Downloaded one called SrceenRec setting it up by trial and error I think it will do the job.
I will add some rose-iness at the end for you :-)
James

Hello @Daneland

This one has been done using ScreenRec, better for the Ps tools you can see them properly, The audio is not so good its got a too enthusiastic noise gate.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=li8Vtc5FYws

I have attended to the 'cold WB' as gently as I could I hope :-)

Cheers James

PS couple of errors in the CTRL B color balance I say Cyan should be Yellow, and at the end with the Clone tool I say Shift should be Alt.
It was cooler at 01:30 AM but I was tired and had to do the whole thing twice trying to fix the audio, to no avail.

Inviting light

This really does remind me of one of those Hopper night-time cafe scenes.
Looking at his paintings, like “Nighthawks”, you can see the people inside are in a warm and bright atmosphere, somehow protected from the dimmer outside night-world. But that light from inside is also spilling out through the big windows onto the street and so it lights up the whole immediate area. It’s probably that light that attracted the guests from afar to come inside?

In your image, the door is open ready to invite the next guest into the light, but IMO the original post is too dark to get that same Hopper effect, your edit is better but it could still go further for the full “Hopper effect” as above.

Here’s my personal edit attempt, the shadows are still very dark for the classic chiaroscuro effect, and we see all the inviting warm bright light inside, so much that it also spills out onto the street 😊

Many thanks for your efforts.

Thanks for your feedback. I was aware of Nighthawks, but it wasn't in my mind at all, and I didn't know much about its interpretations. After reading about it, I can understand your analysis much better.
For me, at that moment, the light was excellent and I liked the composition, but the man sitting alone in the corner was the most interesting for me. He gave me a strong sense of loneliness and melancholy. In fact, I wish most of the other people were not there.
If I were a painter and were painting this scene, I would have excluded the other five people inside and left only the old man and the standing customer, while keeping a couple of people seated outside.
As for the exposure of my first edit, I agree with all of you—it is quite underexposed. And I think your edit is the best of them all. 😊