Pretty girl portrait critique

Most of the time, I just eyeball white balance to what I think looks natural. I always adjust temperature first and fine tune with tint if needed...and absolutely, white balance/skin tones are very much personal preference.

(I have photoshop set up so that whenever I click on a jpg, tif or cr2 to open, it opens in acr first.)

I like subtle freckles and hers are perfect. Katalyst's original edit took those away. Again, it's all what your intention for the end product dictates.

She is Dutch indeed, I'd say her skintones aren't out of the ordinary but she can look a little pale from time to time (we attend the same school)...

White balance is sometimes hard to nail, AWB is mostly reliable but I prefer to tweak it to my preference in post processing...

M_Six's edit seems underexposed, it's safe to assume that nearly every monitor/screen/panel shows the same picture differently?

I found my first edit, the ones that I uploaded were all fourth edits or so:

I took a stab at it too. She's a beautiful young lady.

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bob_r for the score.
The only other change I would make would be to tone down the glint in her left eye.

Can I join the fun? Lol

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She is very lovely, my take on number 2:

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She is a lovely girl. One thing that I would point out is for photo #2. Her hands look really tense and uncomfortable. Perhaps a lighter grip with more finger showing. It's not major but since you were looking for critique, I thought I'd throw it out there.

Eliminating her freckles is criminal! The originals are far better than the OP's edits, IMO.
bob_r's minimal editing is the best of the lot here. She's far too pretty to change.

Your later edits are much better imo. The first ones you posted were too overworked.

You have more than enough examples so I'll just comment on the originals. You have rendered her, a real natural beauty, to appear almost a product of pure computer generation. I like them, but not for portrait work.

The examples have toned that back to traditional portrait levels I think. If she smiled more it would probably help even more, if that is possible.

guys, stop oveprocessing.

p.s. ok, I'll explain. before getting into "oh my god-lets-do-that" process, just try to bring out the girl from the background. and only then [after nice little retouch] think about these drastic changes youŗe doing here.

///and yes, it's my day job. i post different stuff here myself.

///allllsooo - it's a job for at least two light sources [considering the back]. so - keep it easy. I do it myself. eeeaaaasssyyyy.

try less chaos.

M_Six wrote in post #16534962
Just some subtle changes here. This could still stand a bit of brightening, but too much brightening makes the subject look like she has a light on inside her head. I've seen shots in magazines where the model no longer looks human. That's ok if that's the intended effect, but for a more natural look subtlety goes a long way.

And you're right, she is beautiful.

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BINGO !

M_Six wrote in post #16534962
Just some subtle changes here. This could still stand a bit of brightening, but too much brightening makes the subject look like she has a light on inside her head. I've seen shots in magazines where the model no longer looks human. That's ok if that's the intended effect, but for a more natural look subtlety goes a long way.

And you're right, she is beautiful.

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Very nice work. And you are correct, a bit more brightening would help here but the overall edit is great.