After 50 years together

[Misiu Kolorowy]

My Grand parents after 50 years of being together. Picture taken in Poland by the building that was used during World War Two by german army. I did some photoshop effects to make it sharper and reduced and added some color but I need opinion which picture is better and if you have any comments please let me know how can I improve this picture.

[Sterling]

In the first shot, my is drawn immediately to the bricks. In the second one, my eye goes right to the bricks and then down to the green grass. I would've thought you'd want to draw the viewer's eye to the people in the photo? Unfortunately, the entire shot looks a little out of focus.

My suggestion would be to get rid of the selective color and put a nice vignette on it to try and highlight the people, either in the black and wite or in the original color. I guess it all depends on what you are trying to show here.

[SriMesh]

You applied some nice colours on the couples faces, and helped the original photo out quite a lot already. Can you make the entire wall a sepia tone or brick work colour, so that the tiny patch of brick work does not distract from the couple as mentioned by Sterling, and or apply a vignette effect.

The gentleman's face is a bit dark, and the lady's a bit bright (underexposed and overexposed respectively) Try making a new background layer, and change the setting to screen. Now use vector mask found under layers, and set the paint brush to black and white colours in foreground and background boxes. Set the brush opacity at about 13% and use the black brush to bring up the darker image which was started with and paint the lady's face and shirt and jacket which are the brightest areas until they are about the same colour s the gentleman's face is after the layer technique. Leaving the rest of the image is just fine but now the gentleman's face can be seen as well.