>>2841810I totally understand what you mean. I don't spend much time on my photos, and it's always a fine line between going over the line of too much editing.
One thing I always do, and I highly reccomend it, is I'll sit down and edit the photo one time. I won't post it right away. I'll go do something else for a few hours, then come back and re-evaluate the edit. Sometimes I'll see that I went too far, sometimes not far enough, or something I can change or make better. I'll keep taking small breaks from my photos until I'm happy with it. Normally I'll only edit a single photo for like 15-20 minutes max.
I edit all my photos on adobe camera raw, and I just recently started doing my black and white photos with Nik Silver efex, which is free, and is fantastic for black and white conversions.
As far as where to draw the line, that's up to you. I know a lot of people would say I way over did my photo. The biggest thing for me is making sure you can't see any "seams" with the color. Sometimes if you use a brush or gradient, it's very noticeable and will be easy to pick out what is edited. On the photo with the skyline of SD, I can list off what I did besides the normal adjustments (saturation, contrast, etc.)
1 radial adjustment to create a simple vignette
2 gradient on the sky to increase saturation
3 gradient on water increasing saturation and clarity
4 brush on clouds bringing down highlights in bright spots
5 brush on buildings to adjust clarity and white balance of buildings
