very much interesting manipulation !

I did another try on the basket picture.

this is my try on the basket
it's a difficult image to improve appropriately

stretched RGB, used some nuances and a bit of light glow
played with modesd and opacities

my try on the other image
inspired by Pat
selected only the flowers, duplicated the layer, applied gradient "pastel Rainbow" with strong brightness/contrast adjustment, burn for layer mode

Issabella and Dinasset: I love your improvements on the images, expecially the gradient on the flowers.

great results Dinasset. I agree with Pat, the flowers are fantastic in pastel rainbow gradient.

I have been busy for the last few days - now I must run to catch up!

As I use this as a learning exercise, I try to use basic controls rather than sophisticated filters where someone has done all the hard work of creating them!

But, for the picture of the path through the park I have cheated and it has become moonlight.
The picture with the wall. I used a layer mask to limit the over-bright areas on the wall and another mask to adjust contrast and brightness in the darkest areas. Also a slight boost to saturation.
The flores silvestres I subdued the background by partially desaturating it and increased the saturation slightly on the flowers.
The basket was tricky! I decided that the grass had a higher blue content than other things in the picture, so I decrease blue and increased red and green to emphasize the more yellow parts.

david.

And this is the fourth one - the basket.

(All the images I have scaled.)

david.

Two images for others to improve - back to Kefalonia. The first taken from the mountain as the sun is rising. The second, a view during the heat of the day.

david.

My attempt:

My attempts David. Nice photos.

Cropped, slight sharpening, color adjustments.

I tried the morning photo also:

@Issabella: very strong halo at the top of the hills
@Pat625: completely burned out clouds

As I said elsewhere, never be too happy too quickly with what you just did. You have likely overlooked something, focusing on some part of the image and forgetting the rest. Put your image in the virtual fridge, let is cool down for a couple of hours(*) and look at it again.

(*) when I take photographs, this is more like two days or even two weeks. Then the pictures appear to have been taken by a total stranger and I can be merciless with my own work.

an attempt to create an "atmosphere"



(used two different gradients and a fog brush)

My attempts at my own photographs.
Mountain_dawn: I created two layers. One I adjusted for the lightest parts of the picture, the other for the darkest parts. I used a mask to blend the two. Also slight adjustment to colour rendering and wavelet sharpening.
(To make dinasset feel at home - the line of clouds is above Italy!)
Midday: Adjustments to contrast, brightness and saturation, and again wavelet sharpening.

david.

Ofnuts, thank you for pointing at the matter to be corrected. I'll try it again to get it a bit better. I look your results on the photos and they are really good. Trying to learn.

my midday



again using gradients and brushes

Dinasset, you gave it a nice atmosphere, but it's no midday.
Ofnuts, I'm trying to enhance the photos, but it keeps the halo on the mountains. Please, Could you tell me how to do the treatment on the photo correctly? I'd like to see a sample of yours and how you normally acts on photos similar to this. Thank you so much.

It depends what enhancements you want...