Smoke

[Evertking]

[Shadowman]

Nice effect.

[rpcrowe]

Mike, I love this image and think it is the best you have posted so far! I wonder what you think of these subtle changes.

A slight crop on the image right to eliminate the dead space between the edges of the smoke and the edge of the image. Reducing the brightness on her right (image left) cheek a tiny bit and then selecting Cheyenne's left (image right) eye with NIK Viveza and opening the shadow just a TAD with the shadows slider. Working on the original would allow a bit better edit...



I would also think of either eliminating the logo or replacing it at image right so that it was not so close to Cheyenne's fingers...

I'd love to see this in color also! If this were mine, I would have a large print of it hanging on my wall!

[Rent]

To me, the smoke does nothing for this portrait. but at last youv'e got her looking towards the camera
Roy

[Manfred M]

Overall, I like the direction you are going with this image. It is definitely one of the strongest images you have posted to date.

I agree with some of Richard's assessments of the image, but am not a great fan of the tools he favours. I find burning and dodging are far more effective and more precise than Nik Viveza; albeit these take a bit more time. High end end retouching for fashion and editorial photography rely almost exclusively on dodging and burning for resolving tonality issues in the image.

I find that you have backed off on the skin softening a bit, but I think you are still overprocessing and are going too far here. The subject is human and human skin has texture due to the pores and small hair. Loosing this means the subject doesn't look quite right.