Was very windy this day, so used PS's One Shot HDR option which is virutally identical to a merge. I opened the photo and upped the edge strength and radius to almost maximum. I increased the sharpness to over +150. I reduced the brightness of highlights, and also increased shadow (THE SUN WAS BRIGHT!!! and this also hid a slight lens flare in the shot near the tree). I pushed the saturation very high, as it is a dull scene, and then increased the vibrance. After these things I cropped the photo and adjusted the saturation for Cyan down a bit as it was way too cartooney even for an HDR. That's about it. Okay, after some advice, I pulled the Pic back up. Color Selected Cyan, and reduced the saturation some more to avoid the halo around the tree limbs. Then I created two layers, one with the grass and one with the sky. I brightened the road with bright/contrast. . .then I re-merged the layers, sharpened, and there it is...again. LOL. After more advice I pulled up the clouds and re-added detail and pushed the contrast again. Kind of outside of my comfort zone. Hmmmmm.
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Beautiful scene and outstanding composition. The acute angle to the sun makes this a good candidate for HDR processing. My constructive criticism is the loss of detail in the black shadows and the bright highlights. Your histogram is going to show an excess number of pixels at 0 and 255.
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