Before & After 461

The game will last 7 Days and whoever can produce the best edited image (as judged by me) will be picked and it'll be their turn to post their unedited picture for all of us to take a crack at.

The participants must have their "Image Editing OK" turned on and they must provide at least a simple breakdown of how they edited the image, some entrants are a little vague on this point, please give us all details so we can learn and share tips. For instance if you use the unsharp mask tool or Smart Sharpen, provide us with the adjustments you used so others can try them out.

You can post multiple images, but the first image you post will be the one that is judged - all other images will be considered for knowledge and tip use only.
Feel free to comment and/or ask questions at any time. This is a good competition for learning new methods, so let's make it a bit more dynamic. I will be judging edits, not comments. Feel free to comment on the original image as well.

If you happen to be the winner of the game please start the next one with the title of the game and the following number. For example…the next game should read "Before & After #462"!!!

Submissions end Friday, Saturday 2nd March, 2013 at 7:00 AM (GMT) and a winner will be announced.

RAW File Link

I'll get a quick one up this round.

Raised exposure in ACR, bumped clarity and vibrance. Opened in PS, add High Pass Filter sharpening and LAB color curves adjustment. Flatten, then duped the layer, added surface blur to hide banding, mask out subject from surface blur, flatten and resize.

Nice shot, btw. I wonder who's the hunter and who's the prey here.

Opened in ACR and increased exposure by 2EV. Changed temperature to 5500, decreased shadows and blacks slightly. sharpened. In CS6, duplicated BG and cropped square, added oil paint and smart sharpened, usual stroke in white and black to finish.

Lightroom: wb, clarity, and exposure adjustment, sharpen/noise reduction, slight curve adjustment

photoshop: mask and remove dark spot on right side of image, blend new background, High pass sharpen and resize for the webs.

Thanks to the participants.
The winner is NigelD.
Congrats !

Thanks yb98 - well done everyone else.

I'll get #462 up later today.

Nice work, Nigel. Looks almost like anime.