Playing with Photoshop

I decided to play with Photoshop this morning. Mostly because the light wasn't right to paint, I have a cold (courtesy of my husband), and I just don't feel good.
Enough Whining!
I have to be honest here. I probably use Photoshop for the wrong reasons. I don't use it to be creative but to produce pieces that I can later draw or paint. I've decided to play around with this.

Granted my drawings/painting don't always look like the photograph but it's just for concept anyway. I've cropped out the road but I may well paint it in (in fact, the more I look at it the more I like the road in).
I took this photo at Ft. Wordon State Park in Washington State in March. It was a very pretty day (fairly unusual for that time of year but we got lucky).
What I'm looking for here is broody not happy which is how I see this original.

This is a little more like what I'm looking for. Not a lot of difference with the exception of the sky. It is not as blue. The tree is a little starker.

I won't paint black and white obviously but I thought I'd see what it looked like. I'm not sure why I can't. Actually, maybe I will paint it in black and white with just a hint of blue in the sky and water. How's that for artist temperament!
I kind of like the photo version of this picture.
You can hardly get more broody than black and white. The layer adjustments I made helped transform this into the ominous landscape that it could be (if life were in black and white of course).

This is using the cut out filter. To tell you the truth I like this the best of all.