What I Learned From Photoshop And Other Image enhancement

This post will be about what I learned from enhancing my photos using Photoshop. I learned that after adjusting the RAW file using camera RAW, there is generally not much you can do to further improve the photo using image enhancement tools. I mean, at least some of the photos don't benefit from any further improvement, because most to all of the magic is accomplished using camera RAW. Using high pass is really interesting, but I can't really tell if it ruins the photo, or makes it better. So what I like to do is to keep more than one version of some of my photos. There's no single, optimal or perfect setting for the High Pass filter for any image in particular; to get the best results, you need to use layer masks in addition to the High Pass filter. This is what I did for the following photo, and it came out perhaps just as incredible as it would've had I used RAW format: https://www.flickr.com/photos/31391486@N04/23541954290/in/dateposted-public/ . This photo in particular shows that Ansel Adams-like photos are possible even without HDR or dodging/burning! I was greatly surprised by this fact! I was able to figure out, while out light I painting, that you can recreate light of various color or hue, using a single white light. In fact, you can actually use any color you want. I learned through discussion that various channels in the RGB spectrum can contain various amounts of noise, so reducing noise in only one or two channels might be a better idea than overall noise reduction. I really like NIK software; it has superb noise reduction and great sharpening, as well as HDR features! Over the past few years, I've been able to use Photoshop and NIK collection for free! It's a shame I don't have all of the free software anymore, although I still have NIK as well as GIMP, which are pretty much all that I need for achieving perfect photos. GIMP uses plugins/scripts that are free, unlike Photoshop, and the plugins that I've used in particular are great except that you can't really do HDR using Gimp (you can only do exposure blending). The image averaging plugin is great for GIMP as it allows you to reduce noise without reducing detail (preserving detail). I still wish that there was a superresolution feature for the GIMP so that I could increase resolution without simply increasing image size (actually bringing in extra detail). That's the thing; how do you increase resolution in software? There are pretty much no options that I know of for doing so, except Photoacute.