· Took RAW file and opened up in Adobe RAW plugin.
Increased exposure slider (hitting alt key to check I wasn't overdoing it)
Increased "Recovery" slider till red lines on histograms were greatly reduced
Increased blacks, again hitting alt key to check I wasn't overdoing it
Bumped up vibrance & saturation
Removed all options of sharpening and noise reduction
Cropped to make portrait orientation
· Opened up the file in photoshop
Adjusted levels and curves to boost contrast slightly
Applied Noiseware filter to remove grain
Selected (and feathred) Eyes, applied unsharp mask
And voila...
for the b&w I went back to the RAW, chose monochrome.. greatly bumped blacks and exposure and did the whole eye sharpening thing again. Removed noise with noiseware.