Wheat Field -- Tech Help Please?

Nice shot, seems a bit flat though. I like the large wheat in the FG.

Nice shot, Lillian. The horizon looks a bit "light"...seems the transition between it and the upper sky is a bit abrupt.

Lillian, the fg is excellent. Im going to guess this was underexposed as it appears to have sime contrast issues from being underexposed. Ive gotten a fair amount of these myself until i started metering correctly with my 10d. It looks as if you tried to dodge the lower portion of the sky as i see some dodge marks? and also, did you use a nd filter for the sky? Seems much darker then then the lower half of the image.

robert...........

OK, since I'm home this weekend ostensibly working on house-improvement project, I'm going to try to learn something.

Maybe it's the image, but I'm betting it's my clumsy PS skills. In the shot I posted, I had adjusted Curves (in lieu of Levels), boosted the Saturation in Reds and Yellows, both <10%, dodged (or is it burned?) the sky to make it darker, and applied USM a few times.

You're right, it's flat. Steve suggested I warm it up more but my response was, it's wheat, that's what color wheat is. I don't think the original was underexposed, probably I tend to darken things too much when I mess with them.

So what would help this one? Reposts definitely invited, please with detailed instructions.

Lillian, i first adjusted the contrast on the upside a little bit. Probably a tick to much. Also the brightness a tad. I then went into curves for the blue sky and tweaked it a little bit to bring out some more blue there. I then added a touch of saturation to the blues, then the entire image. I then went into selective colors for the whites, and removed a slight magneta cast in the clouds. USM and wala! Could have probably been done a few different ways and much better im sure, just my take on it with my limited PS6 experience.

robert................

Robert nailed this one. His adjustment is very nice.

- Dan.

Very cool. Most of what you did was what I did, but I went back, strated with the original and followed your steps. I could not match your sky, but it looks a bit greenish to me and I got a mellower blue I like a lot.

Another thing I tend to forget is, I use Adobe RGB as my working space, and sometimes I convert rather than work in, then forget to convert to sRGB before posting. I've noticed that makes the colors look flatter on the web.

Thanks for your input, it helped a lot!

Lillian, if the sky in Robert's repost looks greenish to you something is significantly out of calibration. The tones in your post looks very muted and dark. Robert's colors are much more natural. You may want to take a look at your monitor calibration.