[Mr Hyde]

This is a photo of my daughter. I need some honest opinions either good or bad. Dont spare my feelings please just tell me what you think.

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[atupdate]

First, I like the composition. However, the image looks a little soft. Did you sharpen the image after downsizing for posting? If not, you might want to try a little Unsharp Mask with a radius around 0.75 - 1.00 and a strength/threshold of 75 - 100 %.

I also think the image suffers a little bit with contrast. Without seeing the orginal, it is hard to tell if an alternate b&w conversion method might help this image. You might want to take a look at this tutorial (Methods of Black and White Conversion - Tutorials) and play with the conversion a little bit. You may also want to consider looking at this tutorial (Move the Light - Tutorials) for darkening the background a bit. Not sure if the image will improve but it would be interesting to see.

Tim

[maxwell1295]

I think the focus looks pretty good (look at the right eye), but the depth of field is a lot shallower than you'd want for a photo like this. You could stop the lens down a couple fo stops and still have a nice blurred background. I'd rather see the nose, lips, and eyes in focus with the rest of the frame falling off.

[Mr Hyde]

A softened the photo on purpose. My daughter is 15 and is going through some skin issues. at full size I can see every blemish and all the pores in her skin. Layering kept the sharp focus on the eye. Apparently you think the softening is overdone?

[Mr Hyde]

Here is the original for comparison. I wanted to do a flattering photo of her. She is very aware of her skin and it bothers her.

[Mechan1k]

I can understand about the skin.

Wonder what it would be like if you did a selective desaturation of the image ... maybe colour the eyes in it and keep them sharpish ... and then the remainder as a softened B&W.

After seeing the original ... and the B&W image ... you have done well to hide the skin blemishes.

[raz-0]

Judging from the original, you want to try a few different methods for going B&W. You want the greens to come out darker.

Also do some googling and reading up on retouching techniques. You can ditch the acne without getting so blurry.

I messed around with your resized original in photoshop, and got a pretty decent result that should please the acne sensitive.

[RBellavance]

I agree about the blur being a little bit much. I also find that the image is framed a bit too tightly. I don't mind the upper portion, but I keep thinking that I would prefer it if we saw her whole chin.

Otherwise, nice lighting and nice expression on your daughter's face !

[atupdate]

Judging from the original, you want to try a few different methods for going B&W. You want the greens to come out darker.

Also do some googling and reading up on retouching techniques. You can ditch the acne without getting so blurry.

I messed around with your resized original in photoshop, and got a pretty decent result that should please the acne sensitive.

Very nice edit.

For the B&W conv. tutorial I posted, the channel mixer method with red (primarily) and blue stronger than green appears to work similar to your edit. DPChallenge also has a good tutorial on retouching (http://www.dpchallenge.com/tutorial.php?TUTORIAL_ID=54).

Tim

[Spongefingers]

I agree about the blur being a little bit much. I also find that the image is framed a bit too tightly. I don't mind the upper portion, but I keep thinking that I would prefer it if we saw her whole chin.

Otherwise, nice lighting and nice expression on your daughter's face !

True, one of the first things I thought when seeing the photo was that there wasn't enough chin in there.
More careful post-processing is definitely worth it here, as raz-0 has demonstrated. It's a good image, worth spending time improving on.

[Mr Hyde]

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and suggestions.