Attention: Leslie Reed

This is definitely moving in the direction I was thinking of. I see what you mean about the sharpening on the background hill--it's hard to get it to look sharp without artifacts showing up. I'm curious about the source of the blurriness in the image--the blue-green version seems to preserve sharpness back there. Is there something in the post-processing method you used for this version that introduced blur there (and on parts of the right-hand cactus)? If the original image was sharp everywhere, it might be interesting to try superimposing a black-and-white version of the original with this version as layers in Elements using a luminosity blend mode--that should make the blurry parts look sharper. You'd have a lot of control over how much of a blend you want by using the opacity slider.

Thanks for the tutelage, Leslie. I'll give your suggestion a try. (And I apologize for carelessly misspelling your name.)