Hello all!  New guy here.  I am getting started in the class a bit late, but so what else is new.  A little about me- I am an IT pro by day and I have been an avid amateur photographer for about 10 years, and I like photographing nature and wildlife.  I live in Massachusetts, and the weather outside is a bit cold (8 deg F this morning) and the light is short.  My photography is mostly confined to the weekend now since its dark when I get up and dark when I get home.  So I am now concentrating in the digital darkroom, and have come across this wonderful program Curvemeister.  I am caught up to week 2's class material and am now starting on week 3's assignments.  I have always been fascinated by Curves adjustments but have never had much success.  I have already learned a ton!  I decided to post this image I tweaked with Curvemeister that I found on the challenge site and would like to get your feedback.
Basically did the following:
- Basic highlight/shadow set points ( in LAB)
- Adjusted neutrals by selecting the waves
- Brought midtones up in the middle of the curve
- Various tweaks to the curve to adjust contrast in various areas (sand, waves, etc.)
- Found quite a bit of noise in the color channels and some weird colors (magenta, etc) so I blurred the color channels in LAB to smooth things out.  It seemed to work in this image since the color was the same in so much of the image.
- Had trouble pulling out detail in the mountains, so any suggestions would be appreciated.
Here is my result, please tell me what you think:
