Yesterday's Sunset

Very nice colours in the sky but the RGB values in foreground are all single digits close to zero - very near black.

I would be surprised if I couldn't see more detail in the foreground at the time since the sun is still reasonably high above the horizon.

Carefully worded: Danno was using his screen-color-picker. Your experience could be be different.

Yep, I described what I see on my particular screen because that is all I can go by.

A given image will not render exactly the same on every screen for obvious and commonly known reasons.

Exactly. The photographer chose settings that create a silhouette of the trees on the ridge and give a frame to the base of the image. Discussion about whether or not it might have been possible to see detail in the dark areas is completely irrelevant to discussion of the image.

Yes -- this is exactly correct. I could have processed the photo differently to retain more detail in the shadows, but I processed the photo in the way that I did for the exact reasons you mention. Not all photos benefit from displaying the full range of the DR recorded by the sensor, in my opinion, but others, of course, may feel differently. For me, that "HDR look" is often very unappealing.

Let me add two more from the same day:

Nice sunsets. I like the higher clouds still in normal sunlight

The last one looks quite Jovian and you may want to ask NASA if that's their jet flying across the sky... 😊

No problem if that is what you wanted.

It comes down to personal preferences and taste.

For my taste there is too much very near black in the foreground but the sky is nice as posted earlier.

Exactly what I was thinking when taking the photo!

Here's a version with a [slightly] lightened foreground:

You can make the foreground as light or as dark as you like. It comes down to personal taste.

You like a large chunk of near black in the foreground and that is fine.

Personally, either a lighter foreground or as is but some cropped off the bottom would make the sky stand out more without a largish near black "blob" in the foreground acting as a distracting eye magnet.

Rather than you posting versions guessing what I mean with the foreground, something like below imo works better as it shows a hint of detail in the foreground which still acts a "border" to some extent along the bottom.

The path in the center acts as a leading line into the scene and especially the sun.

Kind of. For high DR photos, the lighter you make the darker portions, the more noisy they appear. So, even given that your taste might prefer lighter, the greater appearance of noise may make darker the more pleasing option.

Sometimes, I'll keep the highlights blown, too, or process the photo in a manner in which the highlights blow out.

Fair to say, since, as you note, we all have our own aesthetics. For example, in your edit, the sky was way too oversaturated for my tastes (not that I don't indulge in the same from time to time -- just not feeling it for this particular photo). Here's a third edit:

As a side, for me, the processing side of photography is more creative than taking the actual photograph. Like music covers, sometimes there's a clear "better", but more often, it's a matter of more or less equally good different versions. But, for sure, to each their own!

Yes, raising shadows beyond noise being acceptable defeats the purpose of raising shadows.

But with today's modern noise reduction apps, noise is becoming less and less of an issue.

It doesn't appear you follow the rules as shown in the Edit Me An Image thread when you replaced the sky which according to the rules is not allowed.

Anyone can edit and repost the photos I put up here (just don't pass off my photos as your own!). Is there a setting I need to check in my profile for this permission?

answer the question for a change

This is really nice.