Too Dark or not too Dark

[arith]

I was messing with this image, it was about midday when it was shot, watching the pagefile size in photoshop elements climb up to 2.25GB, even though there was 1GB physical memory left; and I thought, actually it looks alright.

So it looks like PSE7 uses over 2.5 GB of memory to process a teeny little picture; is this normal?

And the other question, does the top image look better or worse than this?

[Shadowman]

You raise a good question when comparing the two images, which is better? The top image appears more balanced in tone and objects such as the statue and the trees stand out more with the refined clouds, however is balance a good thing or is it static. In the second image, the overexposed sky does stand out but does it underemphasize the objects within. I think it's a matter of taste, what's considered acceptable, and what you as the photographer want to achieve. The problem with innovation/experimentation is that you sometimes have to explain your vision and for some that takes the fun out of exhibiting your work.

[arith]

Cheers John; I like sky's, reflections and shadows. The object in the photograph is just showing those things off. If it is a person, then it is emotions, but I don't ever get any practice.

[Geoff F]

For me, the answer probably lies somewhere between those two extremes. But be careful to avoid ruining that interesting sky.

Would this be a suitable case for a bit of Local Contrast adjustment? Maybe something like USM 20% with 30 radius and 0 Threshold.

[arith]

Could be Geoff.

[Sonic4Spuds]

I know that PS uses more ram than GIMP, but with images of a single layer in GIMP I rarely use more than 1 GB on a single layer image. A 10 MP image takes around 300-600MB.

-Sonic

[arith]

It seems a lot to me; my images are 15MP and I use a lot of layers. Cheers Will