General rules:

A previous round winner presents a busy or just not so interesting image, having at least some potential for different crops or visions.
Anyone (except author of original image) can edit the presented image, up to three distinct edits in separate posts are permitted.
All edits must be based on original image, not on another people's edits (of course borrowing ideas would not be a problem).
Short explanations about your editing intentions are encouraged, but not required.
Once the deadline for images has been reached, no new image versions will be accepted. Questions and (polite) discussions of techniques are welcome, so that we can learn from one another how certain edits were achieved.
The edited version with most likes, wins and its author will start next round.
On the closing day for voting, if there is a draw in the number of likes for two or more edits, then the person that posted the original image will decide the winner.

Editing rules:

All "normal" adjustments (brightness, colours, curves etc) are permitted (both local and global ones).
All geometric adjustments (perspective, cropping etc) are permitted.
Artistic effects (brushes, textures etc) are allowed.
No additions or replacements may be made to the main subject matter of the image; non-essential objects may be removed, and parts of the original image can be "moved" to a different position in the image. Sky replacements are OK unless the sky is the main subject. (We are still refining this rule).
Generative AI must not be used.

Timing:

Get your images posted by March 5th.
As always, you can vote during the entire contest plus one day after the image submission deadline.
I'll post reminders.

The Image:

How time flies!
In 2015 we made a road trip around Scotland. What a fantastic place for landscape photography!
I can remember telling my family, often in enthusiastic terms, about the fantastic light up here in the North.
They told me that I had already mentioned that a few times before😉

North of Glasgow, travelling on the A82 up towards Glencoe, at somewhere along the road close to Loch Ba, I suddenly noticed some more great light reflecting on this body of water. So seemed like a good time for another quick photo stop.
The standard shot turned out OK, but maybe by combining the bracketed shots here you can increase the dynamic range and make it generally better.

This is a "3 RAW image" exposure bracketed shot to challenge your editing skills.

I'm posting here only the underexposed version as a jpg. Maybe one of the other RAW images would be a better starting point, or you could try your favourite HDR program, or use your "photoshop type" skills to combine all 3 images and get the best part from each of the images combined all into one final result.

Here is a link to the 3 RAW files:

Raws converted by RawDigger. Opened "light" and "mid" as GIMP layers. Set blend to Difference **. Merged down. Then Curves, Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Chroma, Resized 1500 px wide:

** Difference is not the same as Subtract mode. It is the absolute difference where a negative R or G or B result is made positive, hence the change in some colors above, e.g. brown sky, blue mountains.

1 Still experimenting...

Wow, I've got an old copy of NX Studio, so can use the RAW!

Tim

Maybe a tad darker...

A little homemade Orton effect...

Know the view well.

A pano crop...

Just one more day for any last entries :-)
It's time to get voting too..

On Friday morning I'll announce the glorious winner and pass on the baton.

Good luck !!!!

Not really sure if this is entirely successful, but it's what happened. I just used one of the RAWs, no reason to do otherwise, IMO - just makes the detail look worse. Edited in Lightroom...

Image submission is now closed.
There are just a few hours left for any last votes
Result will be published tomorrow morning :-)

Good luck to all

And the winner is @ErikWithaK

Congratulations, I pass the baton on to you and look forward to your next challenge :-)

I'll add some comments to some selected images a bit later today

Here's some comments on some selected edits

It’s an interesting edit with the new sky and especially the warm colours. The details have come out well. Nice and bright. The little sunstars in the water at the bottom, in the middle are good. Looks like the water’s surface also has reflections of those new sky colours but to me it looks somehow like an oil spill in the water ? 😉

Yes, definitely brighter, with a high key feel to it. And with the square crop, I think it works.

When I was standing here I made two versions; the horizonal landscape format of the OP and also almost exactly the vertical format of this edit too.
The sun star reflections, bottom middle; are great here (must view it in full res to see them).
The edit is lovely and bright and the colours look reasonably natural. All the details in the highlights are preserved and the darker areas have details too. The sky looks quite dramatic. It got a vote from me 😊
Your second edit with the “homemade Orton effect” is also good but, seems to me to have a little bit too much contrast and saturation compared to the live view I experienced.

Overall a competent edit.
If you allow me to be a bit picky ,… it seems to have a slight blue/turquoise tinge to it and some of the highlights in the water’s reflection look a bit blown.
I prefer your slightly darker version.

This high contrast scene works well in B&W. I think you have maintained the impression of light very well here. The highlights on the water’s reflection are well recovered and look very bright, especially when viewed against the background which you’ve kept a bit darker here to make the water look even brighter. The shadows are however bright enough so that you can see an appropriate level of their details too.

And finally, the winner from ErikWithaK

well done!
Surprisingly, it was a “last minute entry" near the end of the challenge, but it still managed to get the votes.

This has a nice level of detail and the bright colours were popular. Personally I think the saturation could have been reduced a fraction, but maybe it was exactly that feature that made it the popular winner 😉

Over to Erik now, for the next challenge