Thanks Mark!

As a way of thanks and hopefully not to waste any more off his time, I thought I'd write an article in response to Mark Alan Meader's comment on my Beware post (just scroll down a couple of posts to see it) rather than just a couple of lines in the comment section. Mark thanks for taking your precious,!! time to write such a lengthy comment much appreciated and helpful!

I'm assuming "shadows/highlight" adjustment you speak of are in curves in ACR rather than the recovery /fill light sliders. If so I would have worked with them in curves, but to what extent I can't remember. #3 should have been the best shot as after watching Mark Johnston's 101 tutorials (as you suggested) I tried not to over do it, ie little or no use of the recovery and fill sliders, although I would have still used the the shadows/highlight sliders in ACR curves . But I have to agree a mix off 2+3 would work better than the final result

#3

I think one of the places I was going wrong and overdoing it was with the vibrancy slider because I was trying to recreate exactly the way I know the FG rocks look colour wise etc at there best.

Now for the embarrassing bit and just for general interest of Mark as regards bracketing... this shot was made up off two RAW files, one for the sky and one for the FG. Here they are in there full unedited as shot glory, thus compounding my ineptitude in PS I fear :(




I do think I am now making slight progress as regards editing much helped by the fact I now edit in 16bit and as a smart object as hopefully can be seen in last nights shot of the lighthouse LOL
Once again thanks to Mark and I'm off to lookup his other suggestions!!