First LR/PS attempt, with pic of wife. 100 miles to go C&C

[oldhippy]

Shot this so I could experiment. I figure I'll have the kinks out by the time I'm 80

 

[CaptainNapalm]

Nice photo. The background looks like it's too close in colour to her skin. Try a white background next time. Or perhaps this just needs a white balance adjustment. Also, looks a touch underexposed to me. Perhaps increasing brightness on the subject a bit would help. Otherwise great shot.

 

[oldhippy]

Nice photo. The background looks like it's too close in colour to her skin. Try a white background next time. Or perhaps this just needs a white balance adjustment. Also, looks a touch underexposed to me. Perhaps increasing brightness on the subject a bit would help. Otherwise great shot.

Thanks for the advice. Original pic was much darker, light reflected from deep colored wood ceiling.
Took me. An hour to transfer image to documents. Glad I'm retired.

 

[KmH]

It's almost impossible to C&C edits without seeing the un-edited image and knowing what editing techniques you used.

She is still underexposed and the white balance needs to be corrected.

Are you familiar with the concepts of global and local edits?
In CC you can duplicate the Background layer in 2 ways. 1. Drag the Background layer down to the New layer icon in the Layers panel. 2. Hold down the Ctrl key and press the J key.
The new layer gets named Layer 1. You can click on the layer name and change it.

For a local edit in CC you can use then Quick Selection tool to just select her. Selecting the edges of her hair will take some patience and using the Refine Edge feature.
Once selected you can change the Blending Mode to Screen which will make her much brighter. Too bight in fact.
But that's easy to fix by reducing the Opacity of the layer.

TIPS:
Use Lightroom to set the white balance.
To change the size of the Quick Selection brush use the [ key to make it smaller and the ] key to make it bigger.
To subtract from the selection, hold down the Alt key. Notice that in add mode the selection brush has a + in the middle of it and when the Alt key is held down it changes to a -.

Here is a quick edit I did.
In LR I adjusted the white balance using the Temperature and Tone sliders. LR has a White Balance tool, which can be used to click on a gray card, or neutral gray portion of an image.
In LR I used the adjustment brush and set the Sharpening slider to -100 and softened her skin while avoiding her eyes, nose, and mouth.
In CC I selected just her, duplicated the background layer (makes a mask of just her with a transparent background) changed the layer blending mode of that duplicate layer to screen, and lowered the layer Opacity to 50%.
I then used the Polygonal Selection tool and selected the whites of her eyes and her teeth. I refined the selection (Refine Edge) by adding a 3 px feather.
With those selections active I clicked on the Adjustment layer Icon at the bottom of the Layer panel and made a Hue/Saturation layer. In the Hue/Saturation layer I moved the Saturation slider all the way to the left to kill off any color cast, and moved the Lightness slider to the right to brighten up the eye whites and teeth a bit.
I used the Quick Selection tool and selected the iris of both eyes and then clicked on Filter > Sharpen > Unshap Mask and sharpened just her iris' some.
I added a New Layer, set the blending mode to Soft Light and selected Fill with 50% gray. Then I used the Dodge tool to lighten the shadows under her eyes and in her eye sockets.
Lastly I added a narrow black border.

Oh, I forgot to mention I cropped a bit off the left side.

 

[oldhippy]

It's almost impossible to C&C edits without seeing the un-edited image and knowing what editing techniques you used.

She is still underexposed and the white balance needs to be corrected.

Are you familiar with the concepts of global and local edits?
In CC you can duplicate the Background layer in 2 ways. 1. Drag the Background layer down to the New layer icon in the Layers panel. 2. Hold down the Ctrl key and press the J key.
The new layer gets named Layer 1. You can click on the layer name and change it.

For a local edit in CC you can use then Quick Selection tool to just select her. Selecting the edges of her hair will take some patience and using the Refine Edge feature.
Once selected you can change the Blending Mode to Screen which will make her much brighter. Too bight in fact.
But that's easy to fix by reducing the Opacity of the layer.

TIPS:
Use Lightroom to set the white balance.
To change the size of the Quick Selection brush use the [ key to make it smaller and the ] key to make it bigger.
To subtract from the selection, hold down the Alt key. Notice that in add mode the selection brush has a + in the middle of it and when the Alt key is held down it changes to a -.

Here is a quick edit I did.
In LR I adjusted the white balance using the Temperature and Tone sliders. LR has a White Balance tool, which can be used to click on a gray card, or neutral gray portion of an image.
In LR I used the adjustment brush and set the Sharpening slider to -100 and softened her skin while avoiding her eyes, nose, and mouth.
In CC I selected just her, duplicated the background layer (makes a mask of just her with a transparent background) changed the layer blending mode of that duplicate layer to screen, and lowered the layer Opacity to 50%.
I then used the Polygonal Selection tool and selected the whites of her eyes and her teeth. I refined the selection (Refine Edge) by adding a 3 px feather.
With those selections active I clicked on the Adjustment layer Icon at the bottom of the Layer panel and made a Hue/Saturation layer. In the Hue/Saturation layer I moved the Saturation slider all the way to the left to kill off any color cast, and moved the Lightness slider to the right to brighten up the eye whites and teeth a bit.
I used the Quick Selection tool and selected the iris of both eyes and then clicked on Filter > Sharpen > Unshap Mask and sharpened just her iris' some.
I added a New Layer, set the blending mode to Soft Light and selected Fill with 50% gray. Then I used the Dodge tool to lighten the shadows under her eyes and in her eye sockets.
Lastly I added a narrow black border.

Oh, I forgot to mention I cropped a bit off the left side.

Keith I can't thank you enough for the much help. My wife loves the edited picture, as do I. Thank you again.
As they say, teach a man to fish, i.e. edit, and he's on his way. Later Ed