Process of edit of Tube Station Sign

Here is the original photo that I took

To start, I duplicated the original photo into a new layer to prevent the original file being compromised.

I began with correcting the Levels in the photo as I felt the lighting was not balanced.

Using the Black Eyedropper Tool on the Levels window, I picked the darkest least light-exposed part of the photo, in this case under a ledge on the station building.

Then, I used the White Eyedropper Tool to select the brightest part of the photo, in this case the light breaking through behind the sign from the sky.

After selecting these values, I changed the Input Values between black and white, from 1.00 to 1.40.

Afterwards, I wanted to change the hues in the Underground sign so I went to Selective Color in Image Adjustments to be time-efficient (alternatively I could have selected part of the sign but I did not need to).

Here, to the average person, they would not see much difference as the hue of the red seems similar. However, I changed the values of CMY and made the red ring in the underground sign orange, not a vibrant distinct orange but more subtle. This is to make the viewer question the photo if they recognise the slight difference.

I also changed the colour of blue that accompanies the 'UNDERGROUND' title to a purple navy colour. 

I wanted to crop the photo to emphasise the focus on the sign. I used the Crop Tool (C) to do this.

To keep the scale, I held shift whilst selecting how much I would crop of the photo.

This is how the photo looked after cropping.

Next, I wanted to change the Saturation of the metal and concrete surrounding the signs. To do this I used a variation of Lasso Tool, Magnetic Lasso Tool, Quick Selection Tool and Magic Wand Tool. These are all types of selection tools and each one is useful depending on the subject of selection.

After a few minutes of selecting and refining, I completed my selection, ready for editing.

Going to Layer Adjustments, Hue/Saturation, I decreased the Saturation to -51 to increase the contrast of the colour in the sign. I didn't want to completely desaturate the selection as it would look cheesy and unoriginal.

I wanted to give the photo a warming and sentimental feel to it so I decided to give it a Photo Filter. I went to Layer Adjustments and selected the Photo Filter option.

I chose a default filter, Warming Filter (81) and increase the density from 25% to 50%. This gave the photo the effect I wanted. This makes the photo look like it was taken as the sun was setting.

This is my completed edit of the photo: