Tried some new post processing...

[emill]

So I took a photo I had sitting on my hard drive and wanted to see how well I could retouch it to make it look a bit better. Tried some new things in photoshop and was pretty happy with this result, considering it was my first time trying it this way and the short amount of time I spent on it.


The orginal picture (obviously not a good one in so many ways)






This was the kind of look I was going for in the edited version. The orginal photo was pretty noisy so this one isn't as sharp as I would have liked, IMO it's missing a bunch of detail. But what do you think, what could I do to improve it (minus how bad the background was)? And could anyone tell me how to keep the detail of the skin ("perfect skin") without making the skin look too smooth? Thanks.


The edited version

[sldi-rooster]

It has almost a 3D quality to it now. Depth though seems exaggerated.

[emill]

I believe it was shot with a 50mm at 1.4 so initially there was quite a bit of depth. I didn't apply any blur to the photo.

[lyttleviet]

Hmm.. I can't offer any advice as I am new to this as well but the photo almost looks rendered.