Raw Conversion Challenge!

Ok, I'm just curious to see how everybody's raw workflows differ.
I have a raw 20D file available HERE.
It's approximately 7MB.
Please feel free to download, and give your best effort at conversion.
Then post back here and give a detailed (or brief) description of what you did.
No prizes, but I thought this might be fun, and I bet we call can learn a lot.

This is my original, converted with PS CS2.

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That zip-file must be corrupt, I keep getting an error... it seem to unstuff about 80% then stops. So could you upload it again and we can have a go at it?

Thanks for the heads up Petra.
I think I know what happened.
Anyway, I just uploaded again, and tested, and this time it should work fine.

I'm not friends yet with "save for web" in Photoshop CS, so I think the colors were richer on my screen... oh well... now that I look at the image is looks a bit too bright.

The major thing I did in raw was to warm up the colors a bit.

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OK, here's mine. The facial tones are just as they came out of RSE, but I just had to soften parts of the face a bit & play in PS.

The RSE screenshot shows the settings used & the arrow shows where I set the picker to read the brightest highlight.

One thing I would do differently would be to ignore the Filter> Extract "easy" way to remove the background (I lost part of her nose! ) & should have used my tried & true selection method with the Polygonal Lasso Tool.
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=39994

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I did everything in ACR. Here are the adjustments I made in order:

Adjust
Exposure: -.05
Shadows: 0
Temperature: 5500 K
Tint -1
Brightness: -68 (Auto)

Details
All values: 0

Lens
Vignetting: -77
Midpoint: 44

Calibrate
Red: +5

Notes: I usually set the temp after getting the exposure and shadows. I sometimes readjust exposure, if necesary. I set shadow at 0 to get some of the details back, it appeared to be cliiping on the left. I think this slider is too coarse anyway. I rarely use the sharpening tools in ACR. The lens settings are just to add a slight personal touch to photo. I think it helps set the subject apart. The calibration is another personal touch, to add a tiny bit of sat to the red piping on her shirt, it didn't really affect the rest of the picture, so I went with it. I just saved this as a jpeg-12. Normally I would save it a 16 bit tiff, but we are just looking at the RAW part of the workflow. This capture didn't really need much; a great example, and testament to your skills Drisley.

OK, here it is:

Here's my take on the RAW conversion:

Temp - 6100
Tint - +7
Exposure - 0
Shadows - 7
Brightness - 56
Contrast - +25
Saturation - 0

Vignetting Amt - +21

Red Hue - -22
Red Saturation - +45

I guess I warmed up the overall colour a bit and boosted the reds to make the pink stand out a bit. Cropped and did a quick clone job on the legs in the top corner (not really necessary).....framed and USM for the web.......that's it!! Seems to have a little more pop at least to my eye!

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I just noticed that I lost the reddish highlites in her hair. Damn! Should have caught that!

Original poster's still looks the best. The last one is way too warm. It's made her blush.

OK here is my humble effort, I used ACDSee 7.0 I usually use PSE3.0 but ACD did a better raw conversion for this photo. I did:

In exposure increase RED a tiny bit (it does not give numbers - that I could see)
Also in exposure I reduced GREE a tiny tiny bit and increased BRIGHTNESS +1
I increased SHADOWS +10 and LIGHTNESS -3 and finally SHARPENING 100/6/1

I did this without looking at what others did, so my first look will be when I post this message, this could be a laugh!

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Oh not tooo bad. I like Schmoelzels best so far. I didn't crop, was not sure if that was allowed.

Well here's my attempt! Only just started using RAW.

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All very good! I really like the skin tone on yours Dew. Excellent to my eyes.

Petra, yours is very close to mine, just a little brighter.

Schmoelzel, yes, yours has the usual pop. I love the overall color. And I love the square cropping.
I always keep my crops at 4x6 so that if I want to print later, it's easy. However, I've been considering adding square cropping.

Photosguy, yours has very nice skin tone too, imho, much like Dew's. Nice cropping of the subject. I don't think it would be that easy with all that stray hair.

Jfrancho, I like how you used the vignette in Raw (as did Schmoelzel). I always forget about that tool in ACR. I usually try to add it after for b&w, but the results (and process) is much better doing it in ACR. Also, thanks for the nice compliment

Thanks again guys for taking part. Please, if others want to try, keep on going.
One thing I've learned is that my attempt is probably a little too cool. I have always found that ACR tends to add a slight "orange" cast to conversions, I think. So, I usually try to compensate by reducing colour temperature slightly.
It's really interesting to see the different attempts. Would you guys say this image is fairly difficult as far as colour goes? The day was COMPLETELY cloudy, not a single break for the sun. And I used fill flash on the face, and that tends to cool things down even more.

Heres my 1 o'clock in the morning attempt.

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I agree Drisley, Dew managed to strike a balance between skin tone without losing the hair color. Hair is what I was really watching, but I think my efforts were at the expense of her skin tone. For just starting out, I think Dew has it down. I know when I firststarted RAW, I had the tendency to over exert the control that RAW offers. I've found that if you get a good exposure, with a nice histogram, subtle changes are the way to go. We should try another with a poorly exposed capture, maybe an under exposure since it would be interesting how people handle the loss of detail in the shadows.