Reply To: In need of comments & critiques.

[cameraclicker]

Hummm…..

I think you must have applied sharpening to the whole image?  It would be better to be able to look at larger images.  Everything looks good if the image is small enough.  Anyway, the image on the right has something going on with the hair.  It looks a bit like a bad case of dandruff.  Over her left eye, and in front of her left shoulder, it is probably sharpening halos on the highlights.

As a separate note, the lighting looks like there was a flash in the hot shoe and the camera was held in portrait orientation with the shutter release at the bottom.  She is too close to the background so you see a well defined shadow to the left of her.

There is a white spot in her hair.  Draw a line from her right pupil across her left eyebrow and into her hair.  Look along that line about half way through her hair.

I think her before hair is generally better than the after hair.  I would only sharpen her eyes, the hair was good enough to start with and you don’t want to sharpen her skin and highlight any blemishes you missed.

To me, she looks a little orange, but she may use orange makeup.  If you could reduce the creases under her eyes to about half way between before and after, so they are still there but not as obvious, it might look better.  Try just painting over them with a 5% brush with colour taken from just below the lines or the bright part of her cheek.  Do it on a separate layer, and paint a couple of times if the first time is not enough.  You can turn the layer on and off to see the effect.

There is another white spot where you see through her hair just where it meets the right frame edge.  I would remove that spot as well as I find it distracting.