Lightroom is quite powerful

Here's a shot of my brothers wife. I'm not very experienced but kinda played in Lightroom until I was generally happy with the result. I could spend more time working on the area under the left eye which is not perfect but I became bored. I wonder if she will like it anyhow. Probably not. You know how women are about their looks Actions applied. Skin smoothing brush. Toned under eyebrows. Cloned out some blemishes, glints and dandruff (lol). Levels. Vignette. Cross processing and color balance. Clarity and sharpness.

http://img534.imagesha​ck.us/img534/9634/befo​reafterz.jpg

Not bad. To my eye it's overexposed (forehead, cheeks), too blue (warm the wb a bit), and unless it's significant i'd remove the bump below her left eye (image right). I'd probably liquify her cheeks in a bit, but that might be rude.

It's not perfect but I went with this in the end because it was way to obvious. There is some obvious smoothing on the left cheek and neck. I warmed the tone a little and left it at that. I rather like the little bump on her cheeck. You can't get rid of every characteristic (well you can) or it will make them look like androids

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I think you need to calibrate your monitor. It's still blue and blown out.

tim wrote in post #11660077
I think you need to calibrate your monitor. It's still blue and blown out.

Yes that is quite deliberate. I pushed the blue channel on shadows in cross processing. Also I would not say it's blown unless you mean the highlights. I have a strong levels curve as I wanted to punch the image. Mind you I do have my monitor on low brightness and contrast levels because I tend to do a lot of browsing in dim light (easier on the eyes). Comparing it to some other photos though (Including others photos not just mine) I don't see anything too harsh. I wanted some high exposure to the image and to make it 'pop'. I'm just practicing though so perhaps I did push a bit too hard.

EDIT: Now I can see the blown highlights. How about this one? I pulled the levels back a bit, pushed cross processing in shadows to the warmer side and let Lightroom handle the rest by hitting auto. I want to keep the rustic colour cast.

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Poor color (blue tint)
Blown highlights (forehead, nose).
Poor contrast.

Overall it's you that has to be happy with it, but imho the original is significantly better than any of your edits.

tim wrote in post #11667992
Poor color (blue tint)
Blown highlights (forehead, nose).
Poor contrast.

Overall it's you that has to be happy with it, but imho the original is significantly better than any of your edits.

Strange. My monitor is not that far off. Although I have not calibrated it I have used a couple of different calbration settings from others and if anything my monitor has a cool tone to it which would probably make me push towards a warmer tone than blue tone as you keep saying. Also I don't see so much blown highlights on the nose and forhead but reflected light caused by the flash and pulling the levels up and colour balance to compensate for the WB being on the yellow side. I know the colour of the sofa and wall so I have something to compare against and that is not far off correct. Maybe I just have a different eye to you but the original apart from the white balance seems underexposed to me and I added contrast and clarity to the new version. More than there is in the original. Adding even more contrast will cause more blown highlights.

I have put the brightness up (I used calibration for my monitor an HP LP2475w from here http://www.tftcentral.​co.uk/articles/icc_pro​files.htm

I realize this is not 100% but it's better than defaults at least to my eye it looks that way along with the icc profile.

I might add this is just a preference in processing and if incorrect well that's just me I guess. I had a bunch of people on another forum try different processing on this image to see what they felt worked and was not happy with any of them as I wanted to try and give a more glamorous look rather than just a simple WB correction.

Edit: I went into Lightroom and did a 100% zoom to check for blown highlights. There are not really any. Just some reflected light from the flash. Unless it's an issue on export to sRGB JPG. It never looks the same on export. That's a limitation of JPG unfortunately.

Calibration requires hardware.

If you want a glamorous photo I suggest starting again. Work on lighting first, that makes the biggest difference. Backgrounds are critical. Next hair, and posing. Photoshop is least important, and while you can make an ok photo good in PS you can't easily make an average photo great.

Not sure what lighting you used in this but from the light source looks to be higher than the camera, maybe bounced off the ceiling. Side lighting is nicer, or from above and to the side.

tim wrote in post #11668495
Calibration requires hardware.

If you want a glamorous photo I suggest starting again. Work on lighting first, that makes the biggest difference. Backgrounds are critical. Next hair, and posing. Photoshop is least important, and while you can make an ok photo good in PS you can't easily make an average photo great.

Not sure what lighting you used in this but from the light source looks to be higher than the camera, maybe bounced off the ceiling. Side lighting is nicer, or from above and to the side.

It was just a shot at a family event of my brothers wife. I used an off camera flash on a hotshoe extension handheld. The flash was pointed upward to the ceiling and reflected off a better bounce card (self made) to diffuse the light. It's just an image I chose because I don't have much in the way of female portraits to play with and wanted to see what I could achieve with processing alone.

Here's the raw. Have at it. http://hotfile.com …3a80961/IMG_444​2.rar.html