Fast forward 11 years, to 2026. In the preceding years I had made many attempts at editing the image to something that resembled what I had seen that evening, with more or less success. Mostly less. But there has been enough improvement with editing technology - and my editing skills - in recent years that I decided to take another stab at it. And what a difference it has made!
Obviously, the most visible problem was that the image was completely crooked. That has never been difficult to fix. I did have to sacrifice part of the edge to straighten it, but nothing important was lost in that maneuvre. Then there is the fact that when you look closely at the original, there is not much sharpness. It was taken at a decent 1/125 and ISO 200, which is pretty good in those low-light conditions, but being in a moving car and having to rush to even get the shot meant that it became quite blurry. This may be where technology has improved the most. That and noise reduction. So with Lightroom's noise reduction and Topaz Photo Studio image sharpener we now have a pretty sharp image and no noise.
Last but not least, the original image just did not look at all like what I remembered. And not just what I remembered. This had without a doubt been a stunning scene, or I would not have been so desperate to capture it. But the resulting image looked flat and boring straight out of the camera. Fortunately, in 2015 I had been using RAW format for years already, so there was plenty of information hidden in the file to adjust it to a more true version to what I remembered. More saturation, more ambience, more uniform lighting between sky and landscape, and more... oomph.
This is the result. I'm very happy with it.
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