I wanted to put some time into my Photoshop project this weekend, too. So here's what I've done so far:

Read all the David tutorials for this month as well as the prep ones: Digital Workflow: all four parts, Creative Workflow, Portraits: part 1, Masking: part 1, and Lanscapes: creating dramatic skies

I will need to reread them again of course, but it was some good reading for now. Here are a few lessons I learned in general (they're all over the place, mostly for me to remember):

• Always shoot RAW if you can. This gives you a lot more flexibility in post-processing. This is something I knew but didn't do often enough, I'll be playing with RAW this month, all month.
• Don't overexpose, you can't get that information back. Don't create a right gap, you can't get that detail back either.
• When processing a RAW image, process conservatively so it gives you the most flexibility when adjusting in Photoshop.
• If you process RAW and then open as smart-object (shift-click the Open Image button), you can go back and redo RAW processing if need. (like to reduce noise)
• Remember that the edges of an image can be a distraction. This of where you'd like the viewers eye to focus and how you'd like it to travel (this applies to layouts too.)
• If you want to combine layers, selecting the entire image (Select -> All), using the Copy Merged command (Edit -> Copy Merged), then the Paste command. This is functionally equivalent to flattening the image.
• If you want change the highlights but not saturation - try changing the layer to "luminosity" for the curve adjustment.

So I wanted to put a little example of what magic masks can be. Be forewarned that this is a quickie so it's far far from ideal and the original wasn't RAW so that hurts the process, too. Not to mention I over-saturated for effect. So with all that....

Here's a photo I took last year in Pismo Beach:

As you can see it's really flat so if I were to do some basic curves to try to mess with the white point and some highlights and lowlights, here's what I get:

It makes the image a bit more full of contrast but now my sky is completely blown out and you can see no detail at all. If I were to use masks and do my saturation/curves using masks, here's what I can accomplish:

Yes, it's over-saturated, but look at the detail in the sky and the detail in the sea. You can have your cake and eat it, too. More on masks next week.