I'm not a big beleiver in the idea that a photograph's purpose is to be a record of what's there...particularly when it comes to fine-art photography. If what you do in Photoshop creates a favorable emotional response from an audience, you've improved the chances that you'll go home with more money after the exhibit or show.

There are many tools in Lightroom and Photoshop that will help you "dramatize" a photo. The example I'm going to use here is a landscape photo of the extinct Miravalles volcano that lives in my backyard. It's proximity and the ever-changing clouds prompt me to photograph this mountain a lot. The original photo, as shot with my Pentax K10D. Nice shot, but I'll often "tweak" images with Lightroom's Split Toning panel just to see what can be done. Here's the Split Toning panel, so you'll know what I'm referring to when I describe how I use it.

The idea of split-toning is that you can change the color balance of the image one way in the highlights and another in the shadows. You can use the technique for anything from a two-tone "black and white" to the sort of more intense color image that I'm using as a sample here. Since there are several excellent presets for split toning, I'll often use those as a starting point. I didn't do that here, however. I knew I wanted a moodier, more Sunset-looking sky that also showed the effect of the wind as the clouds were blown around. At the same time, I wanted a more somber and higher contrast foreground. I just like being able to feel the "texture" of a place. You can see the result below

I started by dragging the Saturation sliders for both highlights and shadows to about 12%. It's easy to play with that because you'll immediately start seeing the color balance and change. Then you can just drag the hue sliders until you're in the ballpark.

The Balance slider "decides" where the highlights end and the shadow begin. If, for instance, I'd just wanted to change the sky, I could have dragged the balance slider until only the brighter tones in the sky were affected by the Highlights adjustment. Actually, that's what I did do. You can have endless fun playing with your own images.