[FHPhotographer]

This was a grab shot in the Safeway parking lot last night. I'd like to get more detail in the trees but every sharpening approach I try produces halos, and I'm not sure this is the best crop of the original that is also posted below. Suggestions on what more, if anything, I can do with this?
Brian

[Ash]

Brian, the colours in the sky are what make this shot, and you did well to expose for them.
The subject matter is OK for silhouetting its form but does have some distracting clutter at the base of the image.

Nevertheless, the main features, the trees and lights seem to come out alright. The trees probably are a little soft, which may be a combination of slightly inaccurate focus coupled with a thin DoF (why did you choose f/3.5?) and perhaps motion blur (?windy conditions). In any case, tree details are hard to sharpen completely well given the blur they're subjected to.

Another aspect is to look at your own sharpening technique and adjust the settings to get a more pleasing result. Start from 100% with a radius of 1.0, perhaps a largish threshold like 10 and build up the effect until it begins to degrade the image.

[FHPhotographer]

Ash, can't say why I used f/3.5 except I wanted the most light I could get without going into higher ISO; I was concerned the ISO would give me too much noise with that type of sky? But I'm open to suggestions on what might have worked better
Also, I've tried every sharpening technique I could think of, including Fraser's 3-step method using edge masking and gradient mapping, etc. No one thing worked much better than CS4 > new layer > Luminosity > Smart Sharpen. Again, any suggestions would be welcomed,
Brian
sorry about the title, it should have been "this n' that responses"