nah.. didnt apply any usm nor did any layering.. basically all i did was add a bit of contrast.. thats all.
my photoshop skills are not so good
dont know how to use layer to desaturate the reds of the shop house
need to sharpen all your hdr images.. photomatix degrades the picture visibly , making it soft.
go to filter --> sharpen --> unsharp mask
for hdr most of the time i do it quite aggressively - 70-90, 2.8 pixels, treshhold 10
layering is relatively easy to learn, the problem is how to do it subtly.. i prefer to do it aggressively then fade the effects. effectively what a layer does is "stack" the same image (like a piece of paper, if you will, exact copy) over the original. then you can work on that, and then erase that layer away, before fading it to apply the effects of what you have been doing without affecting the areas you didn't want affected. for example, here you only want the shophouses to be desaturated in red, so first off go to layer --> duplicate layer. if you use the default workspace like i do, you should see a new layer pop up under the bottom right console
note the highlighted part. usually only got "background". now there is background and "background copy". after desaturating the reds --> image --> adjustments --> hue/saturation, pull down the table, and then select red. apply until the houses look ok:
compare this to the original before adjustment.
then you don't want the desaturation to hit the sunset too no? because the sunset is beautiful. so you use the eraser tool (arrowed in next picture after this paragraph) and erase away everything except the shophouse area. note that you don't really have to be very accurate here especially if you're posting in websize - if you intend to make prints or anything then different story. to make it easier for yourself to see what you're doing, since desaturation of red only isn't that easy to differentiate unless you go all the way.. you can unclick the eye on the bottom layer. this will make the bottom layer "disappear", even though it is still there. so you know what you're doing:
note the eye has disappeared. also that the job very shoddy, hurhur.
this is what i came up with working on your version, color balance and sharpening done with slight gamma reduction. let me know if you want me to take it down.
cheers. my advice if you want to use photomatix to maximum potential is to learn photoshop, it is a powerful tool that can really maximize and add onto hdr scenes/photographs.