Well....my template I try to follow is reality. I know what a shadow looks like on a stream....or bright light on a cactus...etc...etc.

Now my EDITING style....believe it or not is play with the adjustments till I get it looking natural. Once I have a curves dialogue box up....I place my curser over the most adversly affected area and see where on the curves it lies and adjust the main curve.....then start working on it.

My RGB and the LAB curve are the curves I use the main curve on....as well as all the diffrent color channels seperatly. In CMYK...I only use the seperate color channels...not the main one.

My main technique is to slide back and fourth till I get what I see is natural....tightening the slide till I get to my destination.

The key is to not only notice what area your trying to correct...but to also notice the areas your not trying to correct....as somtimes getting one part right...messes up another part. So right after I get done....I usually toggle the curve or color adjustment level off and back on to see the diffrence and see if there are any other changes to make....or maybe adjustments to the layer opacity or even some layer masking to localize the adjustments (usually very similar to my bending tutorial...select the area you want to mask with the color selection tool and feather it out a bit (usually not as strong as in a blend for light) then hit the layer mask tool)

Hope this all helps.

Roman