B/W Conversion - What Can I Do Better?

[smackitsakic]

The other day my wife was giving our newborn daughter a bath. The lighting situation was fairly dim with minimal ambient light, just one potlight above the sink. I grabbed my camera and 430 ex flash and fired a few shots.

Settings on these were F8, SS 1/125, ISO 100. The originals, as you can see, came out a fair bit underexposed.

I corrected the exposure, bumped up the contrast slightly, then did some selective sharpening around her eyes and mouth before applying the b/w adjustment filter. I also added a slight gausian blur to soften the skin, then masked her eyes/mouth to bring back their clarity.

Thoughts on my post processing? What would you do differently? I'm still fairly new to photoshop but have done quite a chunk of studying through Chris Orwig's videos on lynda.com.

What would you do differently to make these better?

 

[LeftFieldPhotography]

They aren't bad....not bad at all. Do you shoot in RAW or JPEG? If RAW good, if JPEG---um not so good for what you are trying to do. If you shoot in RAW you can actually adjust your tonal levels of gray a little bit more in depth. If you did shoot in RAW could you email me the original file so I can play with it in the ACR to walk you through it?

 

[smackitsakic]

Yes the files are shot in RAW. How can I email you a 40MB file? I'd be happy to send it to you.

Any others with comments?

 

[MissCream]

Is that a birth mark or a rash on the babies face?