thanks uniex!
it was all a single exposure(only one shot) all i did was to adjust the levels up a bit to get the colors the way they are on the clouds area! they are several ways, as you may or may not know, but its possible to manage to be able to adjust the levels in selected areas within a picture. (even when it has complex foliage, like this image ) All i did was to adjust levels for the sky separately and for the grass separately as well. see, if you try adjusting levels on the overall image, the diagram on the levels would not account for separate areas in the image(it will do it generally ) there is nothing else done to this image than levels adjustments, not color balance or brightness and contrast. just levels... i have seen other fellow bloggers that they start to notice the advantage of doing selective level adjustments but they fall short on getting the image to have smooth transition in between the areas that are selectively level adjusted. getting a decently smooth transition is key so that it looks as naturally as possible.
I am sorry if this sound complex or unclear - remember i have been only writing in English for 3.5 years now. i could try to post a step by step guide of this process if i see more people show interest on learning a clean way to do this.
feel free to email me directly if you have any more questions.
cheers
amin

aminTorres on 26th July 2007 @ 5:53pm

i will keep away from using the magic wand! - you can do really great selection with it, but it usually entails constantly changing the tolerance a lot! plus results are always inconsistent. What i did in this case is a combination of selecting color range and then creating a quickmask and going back and selecting some areas manually. it takes some time but you can do it precisely ! there is no (one) absolute way on doing this so whatever works for you would do the trick, sometimes i duplicate a layer and bump the contrast very harshly to differentiate drastically from an area to another, then make the selection. then delete the layer.
whatever is the path you take to do a selection, make sure you ad some feather to it, at least on pixel.
on cs3 is under selec+ modify +feather. on cs2 just select+feather ... adding at least 1 pixel of feathering would guarantee the selection wont be of a sharp cut, but a smooth one. hope that helps!

aminTorres on 13th August 2007 @ 5:36pm