No More Washed Out Backgrounds or Dark Foregrounds

With thanks to Kurt, I've finally got around to working out how to do this. The key, for any other beginners interested, is Adjustment Layers and Layer Masks in Photoshop, and the use of the airbrush to feather. To anyone not interested, that isn't going to make much sense, but here's an example. The raw image of this photo, taken on Kitadake in July, had an almost completely washed out sky.