Overcooked?

Zerodog

Here is a shot that I really like of my dog. It was harsh light and he was in my shadow. Hard to wrangle a fish, pole, camera and dog at the same time. But I think I fixed it up a bit.

Here is the original import. To me the pup and fish are way dark. Just pumping up the exposure makes the grass too bright.
1.


Here is one that I think I probably overdid in Photoshop. Lots of adjustment layers in this. The fish, dog, lure, and tongue all have their own layers. I also did some color tweaking and exposure gradients in Lightroom.
2.


For this one I started over again. Tuned the exposure in LR first and added my exposure gradients. Then went to Photoshop to give the fish a layer and tune it up just a little. I adjusted the exposure and brightness of the fish to lighten it up. I also burned in the tail a bit to make it a bit more natural looking and tone it back down. I added some unsharp mask to the whole picture to make it pop a bit more. Then back to LR for some final brightness and contrast tweaking. I think I like this one the best. And it was a lot less time than the second go round.
3.

Bigmitch

I like the 1st one more, but it is a bit over the top, did you try dropping it over the original and lowering the opacity of the upper layer??

Zerodog

On both processed images I lowered the opacity of the top layers to control the effect. I think on image 2, the one that I used many layers it was something like this. Fish 75% Dog55% tongue 18%.

On 3 I only made the fish it's own layer. I think the opacity was about the same at around 75%.

After not looking at it for a day maybe I like 2 the best? It is hard to say.

So which one is good stuff?