How would you improve this picture

[mtpfamily]

Did my best to improve this picture. To me there is little bit more work on it. The mom wants the dirt removed from the knee still. But this is what I have so far. The larger versions of the origanals are here
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...IMG_5465-1.jpg
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...y/IMG_5465.jpg

[amica999]

mtpfamily, on your retouch my eyes are drawn to the very vibrant top...instead of being attracted by the (cute) boy :-)

[mtpfamily]

The shirt bugs me as well. Even in the origanal the shirt is bright. Here is my attempt at toning it down. The shirt was easy it is the lizard on the shirt I am having problems with. I have tried to lighten and darken and burn but the differant colores of the lizard just seem to draw your attention there.

[Juergen D]

Just a thought...

Juergen

[amica999]

This may be a bit exaggerated, but so you can see in the low resolution. What I did: make a rough selection with the lasso around the lizard, copy to new layer and apply hue/sat adjustment as clipping below layer, color select the shirt, copy to separate layer and hue/sat agin as clipping below...

that's all...

Hope this drives you in the direction you like :-)

[mtpfamily]

Tried the paint the lizard out and doesnt look right. Not to mention have to put the right pattern back into the shirt. I did select the hole shirt. desaterated little and the turned the lightnes down.

[amica999]

maybe taking out some of the distracting upper background?

[0lBaldy]

Like Juergen said, "Just a thought.. "
Changed the format from the old 4X5 to 4x6 so they can find abundant frames for the pic... plus a closer crop

[mtpfamily]

OK here is the final pic they chose. Did crop it more but left just a tad bit of the sky. Selected the whole shirt and went to hue and saturation, toned down the lightness and saturation. THen blured the back ground. Thanks for you input and advice.

[JavierT]

one version

[Gary]

Originally Posted by mtpfamily

Did my best to improve this picture. To me there is little bit more work on it. The mom wants the dirt removed from the knee still. But this is what I have so far. The larger versions of the origanals are here
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...IMG_5465-1.jpg
http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r...y/IMG_5465.jpg

Curves in LAB for color saturation and contrast, masked curves to alter the lighting, cropped; copied and pasted back over RGB version, sharpened and placed a center border. Blurred and darkened the BG layer for the frame effect.

[amica999]

Originally Posted by mtpfamily

OK here is the final pic they chose. Did crop it more but left just a tad bit of the sky. Selected the whole shirt and went to hue and saturation, toned down the lightness and saturation. THen blured the back ground. Thanks for you input and advice.

mtpfamily, it was already a nice snapshot of a very cute boy. Nice work

[0lBaldy]

Originally Posted by mtpfamily

OK here is the final pic they chose. Did crop it more but left just a tad bit of the sky. Selected the whole shirt and went to hue and saturation, toned down the lightness and saturation. THen blured the back ground. Thanks for you input and advice.

Good Job!.. You concentrated on and solved a lot of distracting things but it Looks like you forgot to wash his knee as mentioned in the first post!