Please post a "troubled" image you would like us to take a shot at....

[ggroess]

A comparison.....

Greg

[mikemeister_admin]

Gremur: Nice adjustments. Like the contrast between highligt and shadow and the mood:)

Greg: Thanks for your try and comments. Not too fond of your adjustments. Picture bit flat and not the mood I remember. Sky blue does not look natural to me further I think your picture is oversharpened but that I think of many pictures published today. Hoewever your adjustments are interesting even if I do not understand half of them:( Hope in some weeks. However, pls tell me how to know when to save image in CM and then reopen it in CM to continue adjustments. Why can not all adjustment be done at the same time?

Thomas
PS Comments refer to comments on picture shown by me DS

[ggroess]

Usually, for me the moment when I choose to  close CM comes when I want to fix something, and the only way I can fix it is if I mess up something else. It's like the curve only has so much slack and I've pulled all the slack out of the rope so to speak.

I'll sometimes fix only 1 problem in a color space.. The shadows in the fire image seem to respond to K channel changes for me better than trying to lizard tail the heck out of the Lab L channel.  I tried both BTW...

The other times to close CM are after a mask creation so you can paste the mask to the adjustment layer and go back into CM.

I was a bit heavy handed in the sharpen...I fought that decision quite a bit but posted anyways.  To me it is always hard when you did not shoot the image to capture the feeling of the scene.  Some are easy...some are hard, it is the subjective side of this that can get people riled up a bit...

GregM's contrast is certainly something to be proud of...Again I made different decisions regarding the image...

Greg

[mikemeister_admin]

Here is my try. Stared with som curveadjustments in Lab mode CM. Back to PSE. Selected shadows and made adjustments with levels and hadow/highlight. Duplicated layer and set screen mode.
Thomas

[mikemeister_admin]

Here's a picture that needs some work on the skin tones.

[mikemeister_admin]

Hello
Croped picture. Adjusted in CM Lab mode with curves. Used neutral and Skin pin. Back to PSE. Made a selection of foregound. Adjusted background and foreground with levels. Blured Background. Did an extra adjustment of eyes with levels. Applied unsharp mask.
Thomas

[Gary]

My try...I opened the photo in camera raw and did some adjustments for the background because I was getting a reading of 255 in several highlight places before doing anything with the child, I then brought it into PS as a smart object and made a "smart object via a layer" then put on a layer mask and painted over the background with a soft black brush then I flattened the layers and opened CM and tried some pinning but could not get what I wanted so I did some adjusting in RGB. I know its not great but thats were I'm at right now.

[Gary]

Sorry I missed a step above the first layer was adjusted for the background, the second layer was taken back into camera raw & adjusted for the little girl.

Gary

[mikemeister_admin]

I liked the photo better in B&W, What do you think?
Thomas

[ggroess]

How did you do the conversion to B&W. 
The skin looks a bit dark on my monitor...

Greg