RustyBug Offline Upload & Sell: On
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I get what Keith is saying about the PS aspect of things ... BUT, recalling the days of Film, the exact same debate was rendered between Ektachrome, Kodachrome and Fujichrome. Essentially three different films with three different profiles. Being Chrome, there typically wasn't a lot of darkroom work with them, most WYSWWYG (What Ya Shot Was What Ya Got).
Yet, choose Ektachrome and you'd get something much more like the OP version. Choose Fujichrome and you could wind up more like my rework ... just using standard processing necessary to develop the film. Additionally, variance could be manifest from over / under exposure technique as desired. The OP reminds me of slightly overexposed Ektachrome.
My point here is that "finishing" your work is just as much a part of the process as capturing it ... and the choices for profiles today are just as valid as the choices of film profiles. (Actually, this is the essence of why digital photography was developed ... i.e. to allow personalized profiling.) Me, I was a Fuji guy (finest E-6 available). Most die hard Ektachrome shooters felt Fuji was "not real".
That said, there is a point where plausible turns into fantastical. Depending on what it is you want to convey, it could land anywhere on the scale from a bland recording to an unbelievable (i.e. beyond plausible) fantastic artistic expression ... which when I first learned of Adams doing his darkroom manipulations, I retorted to my instructor "He Cheats !!!"
But, it wasn't till decades later that I began to associate with his concepts of conveying presence ... i.e. what it was like to be there. That might sound like the same thing as "as seen", but it really takes in more than just what your eyes saw (which btw, is a fabrication of your brain anyway), it strives to establish the presence of being there.
Here ... we have a pano that spans I'm guessing more than 90 degrees. The points on the compass being NESW of course are at the same interval. That noted, the lighting in the West sky should be different from that of the North > Northeast sky. For me, the OP sky didn't really do much to help convey the amount of span being encompassed by the pano. In that regard, I want to render the sky in such a way that it was evident that the you weren't looking in a "singular" direction as part of establishing the presence of being in a spacious viewpoint in concert with the width of the pano.
Then, from there, it was a matter of considering that the flat illumination of the open sky was not creating any contrast. So, the only lighting that was available to create such contrast was coming directionally from the West. Noting the direction from which it might be derived, I then tried to bring up the contrast in the areas that I felt could be receiving illumination from that Western light ... as it is the only plausible specular light available.
Thus, if the specular light is to be the key light for providing exposure, it is also the key light for providing the WB (i.e. not the blue open sky), and a corresponding WB shift was applied to emulate the warmer key light. As noted, it is a bit over the top for illustration, but I wanted to present the directional attributes that the lighting could associate to the scene.
NOTE: The halos behind the formation is NOT intended to be backlighting (that's not plausible, given the direction of the lighting). It is simply lazy artifact generation from pp.
I think the various areas are opened up too much in my rework (i.e. too great an expanse, too little difference for directional falloff), but I mostly wanted the OP to see what he might have to make decisions about. As to the HOW, I mostly use layers and blending modes (i.e. multiply, overlay, etc.) and color balance in concert with channel (or other) masks.
Landing it where you want it ... that'll be your call ... based on the message you desire to convey. Looking forward to watching it unfold as you decide where you want to take it.
HTH
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