Thunderstorm in Midwest

I am spending so much time polishing my Lightroom skills, that I am loosing my touch in Photoshop. If I had any to speak of. I wanted to take this photo, which I have take from the car, driving 65 mile/h on the Interstate, and made it into what I wanted it be. Lightroom could do, for such basic touch, but somehow it introduced more noise then originally was (and there was a lot, all right!). So I exported the image to Photoshop… and got stuck. Made Selection, and couldn’t figure out which Adjustment Layer to pick to do what I want… Disaster. It is another hour passing, and I am still on it. In the beginning. Third approach. Smart Objects maybe?
Another bunch of hours passed, and I am still at square one. How hard can it be to adjust separately two parts of an image!
All right, I am giving up. I have the effect, to some extent what I wanted. Some lessons learned.
1. Somebody could name consistently same things in Lightroom and Photoshop. After all, they are products of same company.
2. I like Smart Objects. With using Lightroom most of the time, I know when things are, and can find them in Camera Raw, even if named differently. Finding things in Adjustement Layers seems impossible without advanced help options.
3. Sometimes, what you consider simple, minor touch-up, turns out to be an afternoon-in front of a screen-for nothing day :(. Although I like the image.
4. This is exclusively to my husband :)- I need a “real” Mac…
I used Topaz Denoise plug-in for this one, and I think I will soon write something about plug-ins…..