kymarto Loc: Portland OR and Milan Italy

For me it was a long learning curve and I'm still being surprised by what works and what doesn't. Every image is a different challenge and I almost always do extensive post adjustment in Photoshop.

joe west Loc: Taylor, Michigan

nice

joecichjr Loc: Chicago S. Suburbs, Illinois, USA

Wow Stupendous

R.G. Loc: Scotland

I'll comment on the first image rather than your HDR process. When I get that effect in clouds I find that lifting the shadows can be enough because that's what the problem is - the shadows are too dark and solid. Changing the overall brightness probably won't work well because you'd be lifting the highlights as well as the darks, and skies usually benefit a lot from lowering the highlights. The same can be said for adding too much contrast to the sky. If lowering the overall contrast of the sky doesn't have the desired effect you could select the dark areas then lift the shadows and lower the contrast for that selection. In really stubborn cases you could also lift the brightness for that selection, which will be OK because it won't include the highlights.

As is often the case, darkened areas can end up with too much saturation because darkening colours strengthens them. If you've selected the dark areas you may find that lowering the saturation will help them to not look too solid. As a general rule you don't want to lower the saturation for the whole sky because the rest of the sky may need whatever saturation it has - in fact the highlights may even need more.

If you look at the dark exposure of your original bracketed shots, the sky in that shot is close to what you want in the final edit. If you edited that shot just for the clouds you'd find that it didn't need much done to it and you'd find it was easy to hold on to a very natural look. Notice that the clouds in that shot don't look in the least bit solid or over-saturated, despite being relatively dark. That's what you should be aiming for in your final edit.

joecichjr Loc: Chicago S. Suburbs, Illinois, USA

Beautiful serenity 🎯🎯🎯🎯