Custom White Balance and Lightening a specific area

[BikerJohn]

Ok, so I had to post this, but I started a new thread because I've already posted it twice to the Picture of the Day thread...

For those of you who haven't see it, check out the picture of the day thread pages 1107 and 1108.

This time I have the white balance adjusted plus I touched up the colors a bit and used the dodge tool pastel light brush 20, 64, and 118 pixels with about 25% on exposure to lighten some of the darker areas. Does anyone have any other suggestions on what tool to use to lighten a specific area? I'm only using photoshop elements 7.0. I didn't want to lighten the whole scene any more because the trees and bridge were already starting to get too light.

[Tomcat]

The bridge looks like it has a green tint to it. Could just be how it looks on my monitor. I thought the last one on the POD looked good. Only you know what the scene looked like. How's it look when you print it. I'm still using Elements 6. I'm learning new stuff all the time. I just try this and that until I like what I see then I print it then make adjustments until it prints the way I want it.

[TheWengler]

I didn't read through all of the responses to your other posts, but I have a couple things for you to consider. In shade the light is cooler. Sunlight shining through green leaves will make light greener. After the sunset, light turns blue. It is the "blue hour" after all. I use a Hoya CPL and don't have any color cast issue, but I have heard that sometimes they can cool things off a bit. None of this is really an issue if you shoot RAW and fix it later.

As for the local adjustments, I use dodge/burn for minor tweaks. For more significant adjustments I will make multiple conversions of my RAW file and blend them together using layers. I do this in PSE5.