New to photography and DPS - Too much post-production fixing?

[kcsnedah]

Hello everyone!

I just recently got a Pentax K2000 and am just stepping into photography. I'm not great with settings yet, so I have to do some work in post-production until I get better in the field. I recently took a friend's daughter to a park and had my camera along. Here is a link to the original of my favorite shots. As you can see, it's grainy and the color is too cool.

I did some work on it, warmed it up, got rid of the noise, and tried to fix the drool on the chin and some of the lunch leftovers on the clothes. Here's the finished version. I also attached the finished one.

Is this too much fixing for one shot? And other than changing the lighting outside (by being in the sun, which results in squinting) what settings may have produced a better original picture? Right after I took this, I changed my white balance to cloudy and that helped all the later pictures, color-wise.

Exif data:
Exposure: 0.001 sec (1/2000)
Aperture: f/6.7
Focal Length: 55 mm
ISO Speed: 1600
Exposure Bias: +1 EV

[JohnT]

That came out very soft and nice. I know zilch about portrait photograpy, but when the sun is super bright I use a polarizer lens to get better color and not as harsh. You will find that when taking portraits outside that you will be using your flash more to obscure shadows, also known as fill flash. I mess with my white balance to achieve better quality and that helps quite a bit.

[frontboard180]

I really like this picture. I think that photos of children can be really amazing and i think that this one is pretty good I love the depth of field as well. The shutter speed you used seems high and slowing it down may give you different results. I'm new to photography as well and thats why I don't have too much instruction for you, but i really like your image and I think you're headed in a good direction

If you get a chance check out my Flickr: frontboard180's Photostream

Thanks!

Fred.

[Barbara V]

It doesn't seem like too much pp at all... the after shot came out lovely.

[AnnaBee]

The end justifies the means