Headshot - Need some C&C and to finish this.

Only my fourth ever shoot and my second with "fake lights" so feel free to let me know if its a complete loss.

Did a small portrait shot for someone who wants to use the images on flyers and their website - a nightclub/bar percussion musician.

Was shot in a rather dim upstairs against a cream wall (blown out by a speedlite) with window and silver reflector light camera right and umbrella shoot through to the left (1 stop difference ish). His face seemed to suit the more Rembrandt style so aimed for that (but not as harsh as say 1:3 or 1:4).

I have started to PP it in PS. Played with some skin re-touching to remove some harsher looking lines and scars/spots/acne scars. Only did a curve for dodge/burn for a few small bits. Added a little sharpening and bumped a little vib and contrast for some pop.
Wish I maybe used the third of my crappy speedlites to rim light him a little...

I am a little...stuck on where to go with this or if I have gone "in the right direction". He doesnt (and I do not) want magazine/editorial skin smoothening and want a natural look minus the blemishes.
Please help .

Here is my before (out of camera):

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On my monitor, he looks under exposed and I think his skin is a bit over saturated in your edit. By increasing the contrast, the left side of his face appears too dark to me.

If you turn on "image editing OK" in your profile, I could show you an example of an edit I might suggest.

Hey, thanks for being the first . Yeah looked a bit under to me but wanted the contrast between him and the BG. I have knocked up the overall exposure 1/5th of a stop and added some more sharpening. Dropped the vibrance back down and the contrast back down. Much better?

You can edit one of course. Could not find the option for ages ha.

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Your edit is a definite improvement.

Here's my edit. I used your original image and opened it in CS6's raw editor to increase exposure about a half stop and opened the shadows some. This will produce an image with low contrast so I increased contrast slightly. Then, I opened the image to photoshop to further adjust contrast and brightness. I also did some skin smoothing to even out the skin tones, a little dodging/burning and also brightened the pupils of his eyes a small amount. Finally, I did a little sharpening.

I did a crop to change to portrait orientation too.

Brilliant thanks! After I had posted it I had started on a smoothed version to get more of the glossy magazine look.

Think i will keep it landscape as we may add some graphics as a flyer/business care type idea. You mean bump up the shadows? Can I do that in CS6 using curves?
Where abouts did you dodge? The eye sockets ?

Ok..hit this again with a bit more PP hammer and also some adjustments. Used a colour mapping to get rid of some redness in certain areas, upped the contrast, the exposure and smoothed the cheeks a little fir a slightly more "glossy" look. Went over the highlights with some colour gradient mapping to make them seem less blowout like.

Did a bit of dodge/burn to emphasise the subtle Rembrandt cheek structure.

But to me...it still lacks a certain "pop"...

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I have photoshop set up to open jpg and tiff images in the raw editor first like it does with raw files by default. I used the 'shadow' slider to open up the shadows. For dodging/burning, I use two curves adjustment layers so I can control how bright or how dark the effect will be.

Here's an edit of your last one. Inset are the only changes I made to it which I did using the raw editor. I did use smart sharpen before saving. Note how much I increased the exposure in the raw editor.

Edit: After uploading, I thought I needed to add a little more contrast which I did using photoshop rather than the raw editor since the image was still open in photoshop.

Think its time I re-cal my montiors. They seem to be much less close than they used to be.

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Did a recal and played a little more...any crit/comments anyone?

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nice image.....navydoc's edit looks very good to me ...your edits still look a bit under exposed and you seem to be getting the skin tone to saturated (jmo)

Yup, navydoc nailed it I think. I would even increase that shadow slider a bit to see if I could pull some more detail out of the hair.

Navydoc's first edit shows him to be nearly a full stop under exposed.

Your edit has corrected that somewhat but I think you need to bring it up some more.

Not knowing his true skin color I think adjusting the white balance would help you.

So I re calibrated my screens to "match"...one seems a little warmer than the other now...urgh. Exposure looks better.

I have tried to make him a little less saturated, but now can not tell if I have gone too far ha. Used my iPhone as a third screen to check and they are now all different).

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its a lot better now.......the lip's seem to red..

Thanks. One more go haha. I brought the reds down a tad in the skin tones as there was quite a bit of orange red saturation although I hadnt added any. He did have makeup on and maybe threw the WB off during the shoot.

Knocked the temp down by 10k and just removed some orange and reds.
Will sort the lips now:

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Maybe it's just me but your last edit still seems under exposed. Here's my edit of it where I increased exposure by +0.80. Note the difference in his shirt from my edit and yours. I also adjusted white balance and contrast and lowered the clarity slider a bit in the raw editor. I reduced the saturation on his lips as well.

If you're serious about portraits and plan on doing them routinely, I also highly recommend the "Portraiture" plugin for photoshop. It's pricey but does a very good job at evening out skin tones and removing blemishes. You can achieve the same results manually in photoshop but the plugin reduces effort...and time considerably.