First Corporate Head Shot

[MarcusK]

Well, after all this time following on the thread, allow me to interject

I'm still gonna agree with Ron on this...dont get me wrong she does have the look of the "undead", but this is not an attempt at "fixing" in photoshop, or at least was not supposed to be from what i understood.... it was supposed to be an illustration of how it should have been shot, or should be considered for next time....

From what i gather of the fix: make sure the eyes are brightened, the colors she wears are suitable for a fresh and dynamic look.... and change to background color...
The overall lights could use a little tweaking... and a setup was suggested by livin4lax09...

And trog, i agree, short of reshoot, to argue any further about this one, is futile....and although you do put your foot in your mouth a lot....keep it up.... enjoying the humour....

Marc

[readingr]

Chaps,

You still have to work within the dress code of the corporation; if it has one.

Roger

[schrackman]

Thanks for giving that a shot, Ronnoco. Like you said the image is far from perfect but I see what you were going after. The skin tones do look better, but the eyes scare me, lol. Her eyes aren't really that bright in real life. But again, I see what you were trying to do.

Well, here is a touch up. Fast and far from perfect, but I hope it gives you some ideas.
I worked a little on the hair, eyes, nose, skin, colour, and punch. I was considering changing the colour of the background too, but left it alone because I was slow trying to make up my mind which colour would fit best. Put the original and my touch up side by side to see the differences.

Ronnoco

[Ronnoco]

To review and sumarize. Given her hair colour and eyes you should have had her wearing a green jacket and a full blouse or a dressy sweater. A white blouse is not appropriate because it makes controlling detail in the highlight areas extremely difficult. Black may seem like a power outfit, but it does not go with auburn hair or green eyes.
Jewellry needs to be simple, classy, and business appropriate. The same thing with earings. The hair needed the most work and a thorough comb. I would have even considered having a professional style it.

Failing that, a hair light carefully placed was absolutely necessary to bring out the auburn colour and de-emphasize the black. The eyes needed to be brighter than the original. They are easy to adjust and all the edits had brighter eyes.

The skin was too pale and the blue background, black outfit and your lighting emphasized that paleness to the point of appearing "unhealthy". I remedied that with my edit, but it could have also been done by warming up the original lighting or adjusting the colour temperature on the camera or in the RAW format in editing. Contrary to what Molly indicated there were no pores in the original to eliminate in any edit at all.

As to anyone with a "wider" face, the approach is to use lighting and light shadows to make it appear slimmer. One minor problem in the neck area and another on the left hand side were easily de-emphasized with a softening brush. I de-emphasized the width of her nose as well, which I don't think anyone noticed.

If you are keen on doing portraiture, you will definitely need to look at your subject carefully, preplan the shot extremely well, and start learning how to do postprocessing as well as learning how to assess postprocessing and realizing that personal taste requires only minor adjustments.

Ronnoco