This is a stunning portrait. I like the way you smoothed out her skin. The dark texture around her feet is a vast improvement over the floor of the original.

My only suggestion is that you might try increasing the opacity of the background, just a tweek, in order to make it more apparent that she is emerging from a forest. That's just a thought.

Excallent improvement on the original photo!   Posted: 11/08/2024 19:53:06

As usual Carol, you beautifully dressed and posed this model. The lighting, exposure, and composition are well done. For me, the sharpness of your model against the muted forest background doesn't give me a sense that she's in the scene but standing in front of a backdrop. So I played around with your final image as follows:

In Topaz Studio 2 and added a painterly look to the model that softened her appearance and added a bit of glow to her skin and some of the highlights in her dress. I think it made her a little more ethereal looking. Then in Luminar Neo I added a layered fog filter to add a bit more atmosphere to the background, again, hoping to blend things together a little more. Food for thought!
  Posted: 11/16/2024 14:11:10

Beautifully posed and photographed image, Carol. She looks like a forest nymph, so I agree with the other comments about the background needing to be more visible. It looked like a fun image to have a play with, so I hope you don't mind. I placed her on the forest path and reduced the saturation of the forest so it more closely matched her. I felt that the dark spot (frown line?) to the right of her mouth was distracting, so I used the spot correction tool to eliminate it. Then into Nik Color Efex to apply Classical Soft Focus, Glow, and Vignette filters. Lastly, I cropped slightly on the top and left to bring her face into the rule of thirds, and used the PS dodge tool to pop some of the highlights on her dress. Just an alternate interpretation of your very lovely portrait.   Posted: 11/16/2024 23:48:34