Quick before and after edit with Lightroom

I've only been using Adobe's Lightroom for a couple of months now but it has quickly become an indispensable tool. Let me show you what you can do with this software with a quick 'before' and 'after' photo edit.  So shown to the right is the original image (click to see larger). A rather badly composed shot of a friend on his downhill bike. A simple off-camera flash hidden behind a tree to the rider's left. The flash here being perhaps the only good thing about this photo adding some much needed dynamics to the lighting. Without it I would have probably just deleted this one - although I like the rider's stance, a bit menacing. 

 Now for some touching-up. After importing into Lightroom I cropped the image quite tightly - mainly to help bring the subject more into play. The fact that the woods are rather dark I decided to play on this and blocked out any sunlight coming through the trees behind the rider to give the impression it is night time. To do this I used the adjustment brush and completely underexposed all of the patches of light coming through the trees. Now the unique thing about Lightroom is that it combines some of the essential tools of Photoshop but in a much more user friendly and photography orientated manner. I would have struggled to figure out how to use the adjustment brush in Photoshop but not in Lightroom. I'm a complete Photoshop amateur so Lightroom is a perfect compromise for most of my needs. After playing with the some of the levels in Lightroom (highlights, shadows etc), I also adjusted the saturation and luminance of specific colours in the photo - another great tool usually only found in advanced editing software such as Photoshop. Below is the finished photo after exporting (click to view larger). Despite the hefty cropping I'm still left with a 3700x1800 pixel image that is still tack sharp and has plenty of detail. Far from perfect and perhaps a little 'Photoshopped' for some but nonetheless far more striking than the original.