How to edit this portrait?

[nightheron12]

This portrait was taken of me a little while ago and I was thinking of using it as my senior picture. I retouched it a bit in photoshop, just taking away my dark circles, etc, but the color is still quite dull and the image looks flat. I'm also not in love with the background, I'd rather have a nature shot or an urban decay type background, (rusty metal, etc). Every time I try to edit the color, it ends up looking really fake. Any help would be appreciated, and if you can think of other edits that would help out the pic that'd be great.

Here are two versions: Both the original and my edited one.

Thanks!

[0lBaldy]

nightheron12, Welcome to RetouchPRO Hope you enjoy your stay here and make lots of friends. Poke around, ask questions, offer help, have fun!

I made a multiply layer, painted the highlighted hair brown on a new darken layer, adjusted the opacity, adjusted the yellows and reds using a hue/saturation layer, used the vibrancy adjustment layer under the layers pallet, changed the background to leather, cleaned up the face and hair a bit, then just kept playing with different masked and Gaussian blurred multiply and Screen layers on different areas of the picture till I was happy.. finishing with some selective sharpening

[Cupcake]

Another idea.

[vintagecheese]

Here's my attempt. I used several curves layers with reduced opacity and/or softlight blending, adjusting the blue and red channel curves (primarily) to adjust the color. I also made a sort of grunge texture background with a home-made brush over a low contrast photo I had handy. Finally I tweaked the colour and retouched the face with a soft round brush set to overlay with a very low opacity.

[AKMac]

It might seem strange in a forum of this nature to say this, but I don't think you should retouch this at all. There is a natural honesty about the picture which is probably best left alone. Regarding the background - I agree that it might not be best, but I think it would be advisable to back it off, rather than make it a feature, which could so easily distract from the quiet, meditative mood. As in music, where the understanding of the importance of silence is important, so in retouching, the understanding of what to leave alone is essential.

a k