Mother and child...C&C if you wish!

I took this shot a while back and it got lost in the multitude of pics associated with the effort. I just did a bit of BG cleanup and very minor skin work on this one. The mother looks dark because she is very tanned compared to the daughter. I liked the composition and expressions of both the mother and her child. What do you think?

I like it! It looks a little underexposed on my monitor, but good shot! I'd get rid of some of the space at the top.

philthejuggler wrote in post #6898615
I like it! It looks a little underexposed on my monitor, but good shot! I'd get rid of some of the space at the top.

Thanks for the input! Funny thing is I just opened this page to view my responses and the first thing I thought is that there was too much space at the top! Funny that I never noticed it before....... I may try playing with the levels a bit before i print to see if it looks any better being a bit brighter.

It is a little underexposed. Notice the whites in the little girls dress is kind of gray instead of white?

queenbee288 wrote in post #6898716
It is a little underexposed. Notice the whites in the little girls dress is kind of gray instead of white?

Point taken. I exposed for the skin tone of the little girl and probably should have used her moms skin instead. Still learning here but with good criticism things are improving!

I took the C&C into account and came up with this edit....any better??

I like the new one. Cute photo

Point-n-shoot-n wrote in post #6898859
I took the C&C into account and came up with this edit....any better??

Too much red saturation.

I'm just trying my hand. My monitor is not calibrated. Could you guys tell me how this looks? I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of this edit because the OP has image editing on.

trailblazer wrote in post #6920696
I'm just trying my hand. My monitor is not calibrated. Could you guys tell me how this looks? I hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of this edit because the OP has image editing on.

I think it is better than the two op's version of the shot - much better colour balance.

nice photo... though i do like trailblazer's editing. one thing that bugs me about the photo though is that you can hardly see the little girls left eye as it's covered by her hair and she's not really smiling like she is shy to have her photo taken or something...

1. Did a quick levels
2. merged layers
3. duplicate layer - changed mode to screen, then masked the layer and painted back the mothers face and hands (reduced opacity)
4. duplicated the merged layers in step 2 - changed mode to darken masked the layer and painted back the childs skin (reduced opacity to taste)
5. merged all the layers
6. added layer and used the clone tool to clean up the faces a bit (lower opacity to taste)
7. merged all layers then ran a portraiture add-in, masked and painted back only the mothers skin - lowered opacity
8. merged all layers and ran high pass filter to sharpen image
9. save for web

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Does it look any better like this?

Wow! I forgot all about this thread! The edits are all way better than what I came up with. I don't know why I wound up with so much red in my re-do? I always encourage anybody and everybody to try their hand at improving my work, as that is how we learn. I especially like the edit by JMPRSteve..nice work!