Help with refining commercial glam look

[NancyJ]

To get the best out of this forum you really need to post the original.
Taking the image overally - its flat and lifeless, evenly lit subjects are great - because it allows you to place the shadows and highlights where you choose to give the most impact. But even as a standard, well lit portrait, its flat, it lacks definition and the hair and makeup suggest you were going for more than just a well lit portrait.
With a mix of blending modes, channels and high pass sharpening you can get back some of the lost definition without painting the shadows in yourself.
Skin looks like a blur/airbursh + add noise job - which is fine on smaller images but on very close shots like this, more attention needs to be given - exactly what needs to be done depends on how much detail was in the original shot.
A lot of work is needed on the facial hair too.
On the long shot, the nape of her neck has a horrid green colour cast.
Cant really say more without seeing the original.

[FrankD]

I found the degrunge tutorial on this site and have been experimenting with that one, and like it looks now that one is more the way I want to go.
See this 100% crop so I guess it's a totally different approach but it seems to work much better.

http://www.htforum.nl/fotofrank/albu...%2520189t2.jpg

And the original small version:
http://www.doorhof.nl/models/albums/...2006%20189.jpg

Thanks by the way for all the comments.Some great tips.
I will be doing another session wednesday where I can experiment a bit more.


Greetings,
Frank