Re: how would you have made this picture better?

<snip>

Elements doesn't do HDR. The full version of Photoshop does.

</snip>

One alternative to HDR that I've used is to simply open the same image file
twice at different exposure settings. Consider a photograph of the sunset
over the mountains. Exposing for detail in the mountains will give you a
blown-out sky. Good exposure for the sunset will leave the mountains
black. Long ago photographers would address this issue with a split
neutral density filter that would darken the sky. Today you can take that
digital file and open it twice. Then place the two images into layers and
erase the part you don't like in the top layer. The painstaking work is
creating the layer mask so you don't erase too much or too little. This
works best with raw images that have more than 8 bits of depth, but can
even help JPG images to bring those 8 f/stops down to about 3 or 4. The
resulting prints can be really enjoyable, and much more like your visual
memory of the scene.
.

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