kenb, I agree with you, however is it too much to communicate with the owner first?

I can understand that. thanks

to bounce around possibilities and ideas to make an image stronger. To learn new ways to see and think about a photo.

thansk for the feedback, any idea how to accomplish any of this as I am still learning lightroom myself?

I agree, photoshop is not the only way to edit pictures. There are many options I am hearing about in this forum, I never realized there were so many, and you can't beat free.
I would be estatic to try all of these and probably overwhelmed as well, but school uses CS5 so I feel lucky to be in possession of this tool. Do you think maybe Adobe is pushing the other editing softwares to push the envelope and try to imitate and give people the same or similar tools to use? So maybe in a round about way, they are providing a service, making people get creative in figuring out how to mimick photoshop at no cost? Just a thought.

there is nothing wrong with feedback. that is why we are all here. most people want to learn what to do, instructions and it is not a big hardship to ask if it is ok to alter someone elses image to show them the possibilities you can envision, but they may not.

I think this is an amazing shot. Like was said before, there is no need to make any adjsutments, the background really supports the image.

I know elements is capable of perfoming this from whe I used it. You want the tab that has hue, temp, brightness, contrast etc...daturation will be in there too. good luck.

there is a big difference between the two as far as capabilities. lightroom is designed pretty much as a medium to categorize your images with some adjustment capabilities. Lightroom also has the ability to display your images as a slide show or in web gallery format. Lightroom allows you to categorize your images with color code, flagging, star rating and keywords and then be able to create collections for easy access to your images. There are no layers, repairs, etc.. in lightroom 3. elements, doesn't have the category and slideshow/web gallery abilities but it has awesome layers, filters and repair abilities like photoshop has, smaller scale. If you have the access to a teachers discount look into creative suite 5 and get the benefits of both, along with camera RAW, In design, Illustrator etc...can't hurt...Gives you access to several other softwares at the same time and all are linked to one another.

I think to offer an example of adjustments to another persons image is just being respectful. Even if the image is posted and critique is going to happen, that is why the image is posted, doesn't mean anyone should just make the adjustemnts they feel an image needs without permission first. besides, not everyone has the same vision or style when it comes to a photo. common courtesy should prevail and how hard is it to ask someone if you can manipulate their photo to illustrate the possibilities of editing software. A simple May I show you how....takes two seconds. Respect...we are losing it as a society.

This is a very unique way of handling this image. The deer in color really detracts from the rest of the composition, make you see it first for sure. Have you tried playing with desaturation? you desaturate the whole image to keep some hint of color in it and then keep all of the color in the deer. It would probably be less of a visual shock.
sorry, I like brainstorming on images and how to make them stronger and would like for people to do the same for me.

How do you like lightroom so far? I am learning it also and I am finding many benefits to it, especiall for images the I don't want to get too creative on. Here are some examples of what I have run through lightroom. please, let me know what you think, and any suggestions to make it better are always appreciated.

I have used elements and picasa, but have photoshop and lightroom now as they are requiered by the school and they are the editing tools of choice by the industry...for web design, graphic arts etc... that is why I use the tools I do, I am limited in what I know of other options and only reference what I know adobe does and by referencing them I hope to give direction to look in the other softwares
programs. My apologies if I insulted or came across wrong to anyone.

this is an excellent image, congratulations on a job well done. It looks almost beliveably real. and thanks for the awesome lesson in how to. greatly appreciated by more then the just the original questioner.

This is a neat picture. it would be a stronger image if the blacks were darker and the the contrast more intense. adjust blacks or shadow in your editing software and see what it does for you.