Lake composite shot

Its a lovely scene but overall you should be able to pull out more shadow and highlight detail from the combined three exposures.

I'll add this: use a Shadow & Highlight adjustment on a separate layer in CS3 and it'll really come to life.

i don't know why but the colors and detail changed after i uploaded it. the original looks way better. but overall i didn't want to go overboard and give it the HDR look.

You don't have to go for the over tonemapped look so many HDR images get tagged with. I just realized you don't have CS3 but you ought to be able to work it out GIMP.

Something like this:

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/png'

that looks great and almost like how my original looks except your edit brings out more detail in the water reflections. i like it a lot. I'm gonna work on mine some more. thanks.

i had to do a screen capture because the colors got messed up when i would upload but i attatched my new edit below.

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