Square Butte III

Been gone for a couple of weeks but am glad to be back and able to look at the great pictures here again.

This is the last in the Square Butte series . . . at least for now. The conditions here were essentially the same as in Square Butte I, but on a different day with different clouds. It was taken just before sunrise with the distant higher clouds catching the first light and the lower clouds and the butte itself still in the predawn shadows.

This image, however, was processed very differently. The straight RAW image with no adjustment is posted below. Not too exciting, but it seemed to have potential. The RAW file was triple-processed in ACR, blended in PS, and then finished with several adjustment layers to better balance the light and colors. The current Photoshopping for the image can be found at the bottom of this page.

To some degree, after working an image like this and bending the light quite severely, critical perspective tends to be lost. It's easy to get overly wrapped up in the processing. Your thoughts and recommendations regarding how the image looks would be most appreciated.

5D2, 28-100.