i love this photo... most people don't... but I'm not taking photos for them.
I'm working on my editing subject aside let me know what you think i actually made my steps for display nothing crazy just blending layers ...ill learn crazy later
the first 5 are the individual steps 1. white balance 2. vibrance/sat 3. vignette/curves 4. burn/dodge 5.dark overlay and erase
I'm trying to get more drama out of them without going too heavy on saturation
I like it. I prefer the 3rd and 4th with the trees in the background toned down a little.
Never, ever, turn vibrance/saturation up. Saturation is just how far away a certain hue is from pure white, it will increase as you darken parts of your image anyway. Cranking it up early in post will make your images look like neon signs further down the road.
It's OK to adjust saturation later on, but you'll typically turn it down for single colors, not up (or shift the hue).
Oops ok ...I was just judging from what I saw on screen and it made it brighter and more distinguished ....another option would be?
What exactly did you do for dark overlay and erase? is this just a black fill with an overlay blend mode? How would that differ from dodge and burn?
To be honest probably the same thing I was trying to make it darker and more dramatic so I took a layer copy the image put it to the new layer went to curves and brought it up and then erased what I wanted to make brighter and then played around with the percentagebut I'm still playing around with Photoshop I don't want under percent know what I'm doing and what are easier techniques
Dodge & burn uses a 50% grey fill.