[jiminyClickit]

surelybwh, You're welcome

... and Thanks. Remember the Wizard in " . . . Oz" and the disbelief of D and TM and CL? If you saw the simple methods I used to do some things that sometimes I didn't believe could be done, you might laugh and wonder why PhotoShop is such a big seller. My edit program is a few steps above high quality bristol paper and Prismacolor pencils, and nearly as intuitive.

If you think of "layers" as physical pieces of acetate, on which different versions of a photograph are placed and worked on to achieve effects individually, then reassembled (merged, flattened) afterward, it will make more sense.

The negative of "Conni" gave me a mask I used to get definition out of the faint image. The layer is applied as "Difference" and "Color" (two separate layers, yes), at 40% Opacity. Wherever you are in your edit experience, this will make sense when you do it in your own way. I tried it one day because nothing else was giving the results I wanted.

At one point the shadows became very sharp, so I blended in a transitional midtone between that light/dark division. Catchlights in the eyes, smoothing the skin highlights, trimming the hair, and repositioning the subject helped in their own ways. Something else in PhotoShop probably could get even closer to skintone and better lighting.

I hope you can see this on Flickr (at a larger size, you'll see what I saw while working on it). It could become an excellent pencil drawing, but you can see there's just not enough good detail left to go much further as a photograph. There's a challenge for you, though. Good experience comes from the really tough ones. Thanks for bringing this one!

porterd2nz, Welcome

It nearly was going to be a b/w for me too. That negative thing works well for that too. You got good detail out of the photo. The highlights going white just made me keep after something different.