Purposeful, intentional manipulation.  Less reliance on canned effects.

This artist effectively isolates the tower and flag, but tower is blurry. Text could be made more legible by improving the use of shadow.  Artist could reduce the shadow size, lighten it, or make it brighter so that the text becomes clear.   Flag layer is somewhat transparent. A further challenge would be to mask areas so that the transparency level varies instead of one flat value.