My main aim was to give the photo a sun-baked Mediterranean feel.... so...
after importing into Lightroom I first adjusted the white balance to 'shade' to give a warm feel. I then reduced exposure a bit, upped contrast and clarity. I then increased saturation of blues a bit and altered the blue hue slightly.
I then sharpened slightly and altered the angle a bit to make the verticals on the villa more vertical. I applied a graduated filter and fiddled about a bit more with levels. I then exported to PSE 8
In PSE 8 I cropped the image and skewed it a bit to give more of a feeling of perspective in the lines of the vines. I then cloned out the telephone lines.
Back into Lightroom and applied a slight vignette.
Well I don't know what it looked like before but am sure you must have improved it...will check it out. All sounds very clever...I can understand the editing bit it's the exporting to PSE bit I struggle with.
I'd say that was pretty convincing. Can't see the others now (link's gone funny, though it worked when I looked at this yesterday or whenever it was and I liked yours the best (fawns))
Hahaa - SOOC! I'm grateful for the Lightroom tips though - Adam has just downloaded a trial version and unusually for him (he's an Illustrator/PS guru) seems vaguely stumped. Also I'm thinking I should put the new camera through it's paces on RAW.
@judithg I didn't find Lightroom at all intuitive to start with, there are some very good tutorials on Youtube. I put off shooting RAW for ages, it isn't nearly as scary as I imagined it would be, and you really do get better results than with PSE I think, tho I usually have a bit of a fiddle in PSE8 at the end. The only drawback is the file size of RAW files. Give it a go!!
You did really well - looks so warm and inviting.