Creative live has a 3 day course, Photoshop 101 by Ben Willmore, starting at 9 am (pacific time) tomorrow, Mon the 19. The course is free to watch during the live broadcast, and can be purchased at a discount if you find value in it.
Ben is a very good instructor, IMHO and has a number of other Photoshop courses for sale on Creative lives site. I recommend you have a look at www.creativelive.com I think you will be glad you did.

Also you may try the paint spray can at the bottom of the screen when you are in grid view in the library module. Just click on it and load it with the number of stars or keywords or what ever else you may like from the drop down menu and spray paint it on any image that you click it on or click and drag across groups of images to assign the star rating or whatever you loaded into it, to a group of photos.
When done just return the paint can back to its dock.
I use it all the time, no need to select any images, just load it and go.

Hold down the "Option" key as you use the up/down arrows keys, it should work in increments of +/- 1 or click on the value number on the very right of the slider that you wish to adjust to hi light it, then use the arrow keys to adjust it in increments +/-1

The procedure I use is I make my L R adjustments, select edit in and choose open as smart object in PS. I make my photo shop adjustments.If I need to make other adjustments just double click on the smart object in the layers panel, PS will send you to ACR (notice that the sliders in ACR will be positioned the same as they were in LR).make your adjustment, example exposure, then click on open objects and the image will open up in PS with the new adjustments applied (you can round trip from P S to ACR as many times as you wish). When you are done editing in PS click save and your file will be placed next to your raw file in your LR catalogue.

You really can't make further adjustments to the psd file in LR without flattening the file. But if further adjustments are needed select the psd file, choose edit in and choose open as smart object then a dialogue box will come up choose edit original and PS will open up with your layers, double click on the smart object in the layers panel and photoshop will open the image in ACR .Make your adjustments, click on open objects and PS will update your image. Click save and PS will update the image in your LR catalogue. This is the only work around that I found that works by making the detour into ACR. Hope this helps.

The last time that the brown truck came to my door he addressed me as sir, and called my dog by name.
I think I better stay away from B&H for a bit.
Congrats on the new toy.

While I was surfing the web this evening , I came across this short slide show of some images taken from about the turn-of-the-century to the late 50s. I thought it may be of interest to some.
The images are both nostalgic and thought-provoking, from simpler times to times that were very hard and not easily forgotten.
We as photographers, i think have the opportunity to capture, through our lenses and cameras, the nostalgic and thought-provoking images for the future.



http://www.liveleak.com/ll_embed?f=d6d9d5385aee

If you use iPhoto, you must have a mac, if you have a mac, you have time machine, if you set up time machine to use a external drive, you should have the original file.
Just go into time machine, go back in time to about the date that you took the photo, find it, then restore the file.
Hope this helps.

Here is a link that may help.

http://www.mac-on-campus.com/LearningCenter/Webinars/369973.aspx

Hope this is what you are looking for.

B&H has a refurbished Rebel T3, with a 18 55 lens on for 339.00.
That means that that camera will be like new. Here is a link if you would care to check it

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/827671-REF/Canon_5157B015AA_EOS_Rebel_T3_Digital.html

You are welcome, if you have any trouble, pm me your email address and I will forward the email I got from B&H that explains where to use the promo code at check out.

B&H has lightroom 5 on sale for $69.00 with promo code 151042155934954816 at check out. 2days only.

Do you have a backup for your Drobo? What will you do if one day your Drobo is a dead brick? Been there and done it, now I run 3 Synology 5 bay NAS's each a backup of the previous backup. Two in house and one over the internet to an out building.

In my honest opinion, I think you have an outstanding photo that I would be very pleased to hang on my wall.
Your DoF is tack sharp from foreground to background. You have followed the rules of third very well. Most landscape photographs benefit with foreground interest which you have captured very well with the Joshua tree. You don't need to see the entire Joshua tree to know that it is one.
When one is providing cc on an image, I think it only stands to reason to evaluate what's in front of you image wise, not what if, should have, could have. Very pleasing photo, good job!

I find this interesting how this photo has changed from the original post with all the different and creative perspectives. One can always learn from someone else's work. Thank for your input.

Yes by all means.