This is a wonderful sharing and learning opportunity so thanks to James and everyone who is making it happen.

Re the sky... In PSCS2, on a duplicate layer (pre-selected just the sky using the polygonal lasso):
1. Shadow/Highlight tool to set overall contrast between lighter and darker areas of the clouds
2. Select Color - blue
3. Hue/Saturation - enhance blue ...then deselect
4. Dodge - 10%, used a large soft edge brush to hit the highlights in each separate 'arm' of the clouds, in the center from which all the arms spring, and along the cloud/water/land line.
5. Switch layer to luminosity and adjust opacity to taste. This layer was merged as part of the finished image.

My wife looked at our pictures and said we should all ask ourselves if our overall lighting makes sense. After she and I talked about it and looked at the pictures some more I see what she's talking about. For reference, here's the original straight conversion from the RAW file:



The angle of the light source (sun, in this case) is tricky. It's in the middle above, but in front of the camera. The shadows make this plain, especially so with the large formation on the right. There seems to be a tendency to want to lighten up that area, possibly to avoid losing the detail that is there but in shadow. However, when that shadow is reduced too much it can be confusing to the eye/brain if the image no longer makes sense from a lighting perspective.

The light to me comes from the right....soft and diffused. Remember the human eye has better DR than a camera which exaggerates the shadow area. I lightened the shadow area (cliff on the right...and the beach it shades) to give it detail...but left it dark compared to the foreground (which should be unblocked)

Roman

Understood, thanks Roman. I really like your edit of this image. The sky is especially nice.

Re the lighting issues - It seems to me that the relatively darker area there on the right helps balance out the very bright sky above and upper left. If one darkens that area too much, it's blackness dominates over the sky. If it's too light, the sky dominates.

The shadow areas in the unedited conversion from RAW provide a reference for preserving that balance which, from a workflow perspective, is the kind of thing that must be done before any other color or detail work.

I guess it begs the question about whether it really matters to preserve the original light/shadow relationship (this gets into luminosity) or not. The only reason I think it is, is that in this case (and in any outdoor sun-lit scene), the brain will attempt to apply it's understanding of what the scene should look like and constantly stop to fill in the blanks. So it affects the ability of the image to really capture a viewer's attention.

Otherwise, like if the image was ultimately meant to be an artistic interpretation, then breaking rules is what it's all about.

Am I off base by thinking in this way?

Also of interest is how different the various editing paths are - not a lot of duplication, which confirms what we all know - that Photoshop is one deep,deep program with numerous good ways to do any one thing.

Hey, this is a lot of fun!

I thought I might throw my attempt out here, I didn't have the RAW file but used the converted one that was posted here, Don't really remember what all I but did lighten it quite a bit and increased the saturation. Still learning photoshop. DAve

Here is mine. I created two files with Lightroom and then simply followed Romans HDR blending techniques to pull it all together. A few other minor adjustments...voila.

to all who participated in this challenge - THANX!! i think it is good to see the different approaches & the results for each of us to determine which we feel produces the most realistic image (or artistic, i suppose, if you didn't prefer realistic)

for me, as it was my picture, i learned at least 1 thing - to be more sensitive to the noise level. i don't know if i should be ashamed to admit it or not, but when i looked at this picture, & even when i submitted it, i wasn't consciously aware of the noise. although, the particular area that i wasn't happy with in my own edit was the rock on the right hand side - & that is where the noise showed up the most (at least to me)

buddy interjected some thoughts via his wife about the lighting of the scene. not surprisingly, roman depicted the correct source of light, but he was also spot on when he described it as "soft & diffused". the sky that is seen in this shot is very deceiving to the rest of the sky. by that, i mean, this was about the only portion of the sky that looked like this. the rest of it was extremely milky. i could show you a few shots & you'd see what i mean. even a few that are essentially in the same direction. so roman's assessment was right.

buddy (or anyone else that would be interested in the future) i didn't do it, cuz i know where the light was coming from, but i would think if you had a question about it, with the sky in the scene, use the threshholds & slide the bar to the right, & i'm willing to bet that the right hand side of the sky will be the last to turn black.

compositionally - i have to admit that i didn't take as much time as i might have. so yes, there are some points to the shot that aren't ideal. but this challenge was mostly about the post processing, so i wasn't as concerned with those aspects here. in the future, if i were more in tune with the sky as it was, i would probably have attempted to lower the horizon a bit more to the lower 3rd. the plant i might have tried to move to a different location in the frame. but frankly, it doesn't bother me as much as it did for some - so maybe not.

for the most part, i like this shot a lot. & i knew that there was more to get out of it than my edit. i appreciate seeing some alternatives here, & it motivates me to see where i can grow & learn.

if no one objects, i'm ready for the next file. when it becomes available, include me to send it to. if i need to provide an email, let me know. otherwise, i'll look for whatever instructions for getting it.

jp

Hmmm... Sounds like "the discussion is over"