Originally posted by Ash Then save as a JPEG and touch up the colours selectively with your selective color tool or its equivalent - chiefly to enhance the reds, yellows and cyans, all of which play a vital part in this portrait's impact. Then apply a pass of levels (auto if you're uncertain about how to manipulate those channel histograms) and curves for further contrast adjustment (perhaps just a linear contrast preset would do).
Hi
Forgive me if I disagree here. If your original shot was taken in RAW and after having completed all adjustments inside your favorite RAW converter program I would never save the image in anything other than TIF or PSD (if you work with Photoshop) format. Both of these formats are "lossless" while saving the image in JPG you immediately through data away because it is a "lossy" format. Once you have saved your image to a lossless format then you are free to save in to JPG if you need to for that special reason.
Saving your image in JPG format and then make further adjustments makes no sense.
Depending of course at what JPG quality level you save the image, loss of data and brightness levels in the 8 bit JPG will severely handicap your efforts if you wish to recover shadow areas or brighten up a picture. Because JPG has thrown out the window (no pun intended) a fair bit of colour information as well colour rendition also is severely reduced which makes meaningful colour adjustments nigh impossible.
There is of course another fact to consider. As already mentioned JPG is a lossy format, meaning every time you save an image (and people save frequently when the work with an image) data is discarded , admittedly at a diminishing amount every time, but data loss just the same. So if you save often the image suffers every time. On the other hand if you do further adjustments on a TIF file with original data still intact you can save as often as you like in ther knowledge that no information will be lost.
So if you work an image in RAW, do all adjustments until you are happy and think you will need no further adjustment, then by all means save in JPG. If after that you discover you still would like to do some more adjustments go back to RAW. Or else, had you saved the image in TIF and then further adjustments are required you can get perfect results here without going back to RAW.
So it is from RAW to TIF (or any other lossless format) and then to JPG if rquired for that special need.
Greetings