Curves for n00bs

[rockgremlin]

I was playing around with the 'curves' feature of Paint.net today. I got one pic to where I like it, but I'm having troubles with the transition. I got the clouds to where I like them, but as you can see from the black arrows in the attached pic there's a fake-looking line on the horizon where the sky transitions to the rocks. Also the rocks don't look quite right either. I tried to fix it by bumping the saturation down, and monkeying with the levels, but I just can't seem to lick it.

Please oh photoshop masters, what need I do (or not do) to improve this image?

[waltny]

Work with layers and mask. You can tweak your opacity of the brush and feather the transition.

Also shadow/highlight along with local dodge/burn will work on the rocks.

Tonal contrast works awesome for stuff like this.

[Wild One]

While I don't know if it is a generally accepted or proper practice, I'll often use the blur tool (start out with a fairly low opacity and small brush size) to sort of blend those contrasting lines of rock/sky etc.

[R]

While I don't know if it is a generally accepted or proper practice, I'll often use the blur tool (start out with a fairly low opacity and small brush size) to sort of blend those contrasting lines of rock/sky etc.

I've done that. I've also used layers and the erase tool, to erase the bad areas on the layer I'm adjusting. As my flight instructor taught me, "do what you have to do to fly the airplane."

[DWayne27]

I must suck at photoshop - i think the picture looks pretty good already