Thank you all for your comments! I was really happy that I actually got those eyes in focus..it doesn't happen for me very often. I am one of those people that feel like if I don't nail those eyes, the picture is useless. Needless to say, I have a lot of useless pictures.
Manaheim, thanks so much for your help with this shot. Her eyes are so much bluer in your version. It is a REALLY nice improvement. I was following along well with your adjustments until you mentioned the unsharp mask: 70% .8 pixels...that's when my brain just shut down. I've been using an "action" for sharpening my photos because I don't know how to do it myself. I envy all of you who have a grip on Photoshop. I feel like this is going to be that constant bump in the road until I can enroll in some kind of class or workshop. Thanks for the info on making the sharpness adjustments. This is something that I've only recently discovered and that I don't always remember to do. It makes a huge difference!
Hey, very glad you liked the rev. I can give you a quick tutorial on sharpening if it helps... (of course I'm just going to type it now and hope that it does.)
Note that it's a good idea to have your image at 100% zoom when you do this, and to watch your preview window carefully. Sharpening is destructive and will create artifacts like "halos" around the edges of objects, can increase noise, etc.
Also be sure to always keep your originals... most editing processes can be destructive!!!!
Also, understand that what sharpening is doing is trying to find and clarify edges for you. Keeping this in mind helps understand what PS is doing.
Ok, onto the sharpening...
Look at (from your PS menu) Filter -> Sharpening. You have a number of options there, but the two key ones you're going to want are Unsharp Mask and Smart Sharpen.
Let's start with Unsharp Mask because I think it's what most people use and very good with pictures of people.
Basically what you're doing is setting the level of sharpening (in percent), the distance that the algorythm looks "outward" from each pixel to determine what it needs to do to sharpen an image (the radius) and then basically how forgiving you want the tool to be (threshold).
The percent is easy... it's just "more or less". I find that with my Nikon cameras that I'm usually sharpening between 70 and 100% for almost everything I do. You tend to want to go a little easier on people's faces than on, say, buildings or cars. Things with solid unwavering colors and defined lines tend to lend themselves to stronger sharpening with less visible damage to the image.
The radius is kind of a "play with it and get used to what you like". It also depends on the resolution of your camera. I have a 12MP D300 and I generally find I do between .8 and 1.2 pixels. The majority of the halo effect seems to come from this control.
The Threshold is basically how forgiving you want it to be... it's been a while since I've looked into the specific mechanics of this, but I find this helps a great deal with skintones because skin tones are NOT consistent, and you don't necessarily want the alg. to consider a 20% change in color of the skin as an "edge" and sharpen it. I usually set this to 2-3, depending on circumstances and how varied the tones are. This is also a control that is NOT present in Smart Sharpen, which is why I don't use the latter on people. I find it does... bad things.
Now smart sharpen...
It's basically the same thing, just lacking that last aspect of the tool. I will admit I do NOT know the difference between these things mechanically- haven't looked into it- but I find that smart sharpen works very well on VERY well exposed images of more "hard" objects. Unsharp mask is a bit more gentle and really seems to look for just outer edges- Smart Sharpen seems to kind of go hog-wild on the whole thing.
Again, this is just my interpretation of the results I see and by NO MEANS a useful explanation of the mechanics.
The final key with sharpening is to play a bit... grab your image and move a slider to a major extreme and see what it does. Then back it off slowly and look at the results as you change things. Do this with every image and after a while you'll get a pretty good feel for what you generally find pleasing to your eye.
There are also some advanced tricks, but get the basics down first.
And, of course, feel free to ask questions here.
Good luck!
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