A Couple of images that need help

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Very nice, you guys.  Here's my take on these.  I used masking in both cases.

[mikemeister_admin]

Mike, well I guess there is a reason why your leading this group. I am attaching my last try (ver 2). It is pretty much as I remembber of the scene from two years ago. It just doesnt have the POP that your version does. So it looks like your going to have to teach me Curvemeister or I'm going to send you my difficult images!
Thanks Joe S

Lets see what you provided for WK 2.

P.S.
For some reason the spell check doesnt work.    The top header  About: blank  The bottom header Done

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Yours is much improved.  The main moves I did were in Lab - changing the center points and slope of the a and b curves to get more color, and adding a couple of bends to the Lightness curve for more pop in the foreground and the green hills.  I then added layers that all had to do with cleaning up the horizon and background.

Because the distant parts of the image were left too saturated, I used a hand painted mask to separate those areas for special treatment, desaturating (by levellng out the a and b channels) to removing most of the blue cast, and adding some contrast.  I added another layer to retain the original appearance of the sunlit butte in the upper left corner.

[mikemeister_admin]

I did this with the same HSB sat curve used for your beach picture,then blue in RGB for the valley walls and a little sharp.GregM.I couldn't do this a month ago!

[ggroess]

WOO HOO!...

Glad you revisited the images...
Glad to see you can improve on them....

Greg