Jim
Firstly - You may be in the early stages of mastering Elements, but the evidence suggests that the 'photographer's eye' is developing nicely.
I think one thing to consider is that there may be two pictures here. There's a quiet country road bordered by trees, and there's a gorgeous looking vista with a beautifully textured field in the foreground leading us towards muted hills in the mist and a lovely sky. But they're competing with each other for dominance. You say you wanted the road to take the eye to the horzon. It does, but I wonder if you think it takes our eye to its own horizon, and drags attention away from the more spectacular horizon that is the hills and the mist.
That's only one point of view. Let's see what you and others think.
But, with that being said, we are presented with one image. So ...
Based on what you say about being in the early stages of mastering elements AND based on the fact that I don't use Elelments so am unsure of the words and terms that describe its actions, I suggest .........
The field in the foreground (to some extent), the grass verges along the roadside and the trees all need to be lightened a bit so that we can see a bit more detail in them. Some of the foliage on the trees and the area where the roadway disappears in the distance, look as if they may have gone compleetly black (I haven't checked on a histogram), so you won't get any detail back from there. However, the rest, including all the tree trunks, can be brought up a bit. And I would do so if it was mine. How ...?
I know that the Adobe suite of products has got all sorts of gizmos for doing this. If it had been RAW, life would have been much easier. I would have used DxO's equivalent of Adobe's Fill Light.
The other routes would be:
- Using curves, raise the dark areas to bring out detail and then (again I would use Layer Masks, but don't know how you do it in Elements) use a brush to reveal only those areas of the image that you want to adjust; i.e. leaving the other areas untouched and as they are at the moment.
- Use Dodging techniques (the terms Dodge and Burn come straight from the darkroom, as you will know)
So, it may be a case of marking this one as 'For future action' once you've got yourself more familiar with Elelments.
But, as you've acknowledged through implication, you're going to have to work with a JPEG and that reduces the options.