Fixing a "Messy" Picture

This picture I took on the Gaudí Avenue (Avenida de Gaudí) looked a little bit too messy, although my original idea was to photograph Sagrada Familia's towers from a "new" angle. (Yeah, right...)

What makes this picture messy? Well, for example:

• the overhead cranes behind the towers (besides, the sky is overexposed!)
• the traffic sign behind the leftmost bush (I didn't notice it when shooting the picture)
• the texts on the wall of the newsstand at right

I first adjusted the contrast of the image and then used the Clone Stamp tool to remove all the disturbing elements from the picture. When it started to look neater I thought it would look nicer if I made it look a little bit older. So, here's the result:

There are many ways to make a picture look old, but this time I used the Sketch filter: Filter > Sketch > Reticulation.

I was a little bit lazy, so I didn't remove the scooters behind the newsstand. Had this been a serious photomontage, I would have done that. But as this is for my personal use only, I thought it's not worth my while.