Your opinions please.

[Theoo]

Hello guys, first of all I apologise in advance if i have posted this in the wrong section or have done something wrong.
The point of this thread is just to get your opinions and criticism on one of my images. I never edit my images; I try and do everything straight off the camera.

Below is two images, the original and a quickly edited one, I'd just like to get your opinions.
Which one do you think looks better ?
How could I edit it better ?
Should I stick with the original ?



Original :

Edited ( Roughly ) :

 

[Netskimmer]

Might clone/burn out the acne.

 

[ghache]

By editing a shot you should always try to "enhance" your photos.

In this shot you made the highlight more bright and and caused these highlights to be overexposed and lost alot of detaisl.,You made shadows alot darker and lost some details.

I think the first one was nice, I would add a bit more contrast, not too much, used a brush to reduice exposure on some overexposed part of the face and the white shirt. I would have used a layer frequency separation technique and a surface blur on the low frequency layer to smooth out the shadows to highlight transition

 

[ghache]

that pictures reminds me of liam gallagher

 

[Derrel]

Needs some space above his head!!! He looks stretched out and unnaturally "tall-headed"...did you do something weird in post? I think the original image looks better than the chalky, second one. I am not a fan of burned out highlights.

 

[NikonME]

To answer the question of use the edit or use the original, I'd say I prefer the original over your edit, but I think if you worked the edit a little differently you could make the photo a bit better.

 

[Theoo]

Cheers for the feedback guys.
I think i might sit down and practice editing one day but for now ill stick to SOTC.
Oh, i totally agree with more space above the head but thats the way i took it and i cant do anything about that now.

 

[gsgary]

The background is much better in the first, where you have brightened the background you can see where it's not evenly lit in the edit

 

[AgentDrex]

Well...if he isn't an actor yet, I'm sure he will be soon...he's got that look...

 

[lyonsroar]

Oh, i totally agree with more space above the head but thats the way i took it and i cant do anything about that now.

You can do something about it... It's a white background...you can add white space in post processing...

Edit:
forgot you're against post processing...never mind.