It seems there's no end to what you can do to an image in Photoshop. From simply enhancing the colors, to merging multiple images to create something completely different, Photoshop is an amazing tool, and has saved many a sorry picture for me. :)

The image in this post can be seen on the intro page of my website. You can see the progression of layers from start to finish. Assuming that most of my readers are Photoshop savvy enough to understand the lingo, and not being too lazy to write a step-by-step tutorial, I'll just give an overview of the steps involved in enhancing the image here. If, however, the interest is there, I am willing to do a step-by-step tutorial. In the mean time, you're on your own to figure out the details.

• I opened the original image.
• Added a black fill layer with a lens flare and set the blend mode to screen.
• Duplicated the layer to enhance the colors.
• Added a color balance adjustment layer, adjusting the darks, midtones, cooling the areas around the lens flare to give that nighttime look on the left of the image.
• Added a hugh saturation adjustment layer to increase the hugh and saturation while decreasing the lightness. I set the blend mode to hard light and decreased the fill to 40%. This more than anything else added the 'pop' to the image, giving it it's rich colors.
• Added a curves adjustment layer and using a slight 's' curve, increased the contrast further.
• Added an exposure adjustment layer and used a layer mask to increase the contrast between the sunlight and darkness.
• Combined all the layers in a new layer on top (CMD+SHIFT+OPT+E) and used the burn tool to darken the edges of the image.
• Added another hugh saturation adjustment layer to darken the sky on the left, really giving it that night look.
• Then I added stars... This was done in two layers for different sized stars with varying brightness. To render these stars, I used a combination of a add noise filter and adjusting the threshold. Then I masked out the clouds.