5x7 in a magazine (need urgent help)

I was contacted about having one of my photos in an alumni mag for my college. The person wants it to be 5x7 size, 300dpi. How should I do this from my 8mp raw file? Should I crop to 5x7 300dpi, curves, sharpen, send or should I give the whole file and let them downsize it?

This is what the director said:

I guess as big as possible means just send the whole file? Should I sharpen differently for that?

I'd like to have this in tonight so... yea.

use the 5x7 crop right within the Adobe raw converter and set it to 300 DPI

If you have PS, then what Palladium said.

Thanks guys. This photo looks like crap, but whatever.

Well, if I had a dime for every crap photo I've taken, I'd have a 1D and each of the L's...

What could I do to make this photo better? Which of the two is better? I don't have a calibrated monitor, but it is pretty close. I have been working on this for a while so I am not having an easy time telling the small differences in color casts etc. How does color cast and saturation/contrast etc look on this photo? Where should I crop it or should I just send it to them like this and let them crop it?

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The WB is a bit blue in the second version, but it does give you a more pleasant tone in the water and removes the slight yellow cast in the sky. As for cropping, I would suggest a crop that gets the center of interest (the boats) away from the center of the frame. Like this, perhaps, if you have the pixels for it (you need at least 1500x2100):

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This is the one that I have decided on (I think). Can someone confirm it looks better than the other two posted? Or should I darken it more to be like the blueish one above?

EDIT: This is the one I sent in... not thrilled with it but whatever... Thanks for your help.

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