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I made a journal explaining this:

The Steps of One Edit,This isn't really a tutorial. I'm just showing what I did, not how I did it. I can point to some good tutorials if there's anything that isn't clear. There's 2 reasons I wanted to go with this picture. First, the photographer is ESLB-Photography (if you aren't already familiar with him, what rock have you been under?). He's already a good photographer, so there's really nothing I'm doing here he doesn't already know, and therefore won't have any bruised ego (fingers crossed). The second is the model, JenovaxLilith. Keep your fingers crossed -- she very well may be the next model I work with. I just had to turn down an opportunity to work with her last month because of logistics. Watch this space. ,This is what I started with. We tried getting the RAW file sent to me, but for some reason the only program that would recognize it wasn't an editor, so I had to go with a .jpg. Fortunately, it was at least a large file, so that helped. Right from the start, it's already an okay image. it's a good pose, and the light hitting the subject compliments her form. It's really only all the stuff around her that needed to be touched up beyond brightness/contrast. As you can see, the main light is focused right on her, so by the time it hits the top of the image there are some shadows that we don't need. And then there's the hot spot in the lower left. Ordinarily, I start an edit by going to the histogram and adjusting the lightest and darkest points. In this case, I had to hold off because there were areas brighter and darker than there would be in the final image. Sooo . . . ,I just went straight to getting the tint and temperature right. If there was something neutral grey in the image, it would be possible to do a true white balance, but honestly that level of preciseness really only has value if it's somehow imperative to have the true colors (like an ad for food, or something). Otherwise, we're talking about art, so you go for feeling. I wanted this pretty warm, but not so warm that it all just became an orange mess. While I was at it, I threw in some fill light. I also pulled down the highlights a touch (that gets fixed after I get rid of the hot spot).,Rotation. It seems really obvious to me now, but I was terrible at missing this step when I was just getting started. I'm not the only one. I see unnecessarily tilted images everywhere. It's not so easy to see because I didn't make a huge change, but I also adjusted the perspective to keep the lines parallel all the way across, and then a small (seriously just 1%) pinch to keep the boards from looking warped. That little pinch didn't significantly slim Lilith down, so I didn't have to do anything fancy like making a cutout and pasting her back on the new floor. I don't think she'll mind that I took a few ounces off her. I don't do digital cosmetic surgery, and I know a lot of models that get pissed when you do stuff like that. Note that the corners of the image aren't square. No problem. That's what content-aware fill is for.,What chair legs? Content-aware fill works really well on wood floors. I learned that with my first shoot with Rebecca. The second part of this actually took a bit of time. I literally just worked on one corner at a time. What I did was have a new layer that had the brightness, contrast, saturation, and hues looking right, and then I just did a layer mask and painted them in. I had to do the hot spot in two passes because there was just too much of a difference from the center out.,All that just to get to the beginning. Ok, so now that the dark corners and bright spot are gone, I'm finally able to do what I normally do right away. I went to the histogram to get brightness and contrast set right. I was satisfied with saturation and vibrancy, so I didn't have to change anything, but this would also be where I do that. Next I went through and cleaned up any blemishes (she has really good skin, so I'm not going to bother with the close-ups on that). I leave things like beauty marks. Then I sharpen the image before softening the skin. That's basically two sides of the same coin, so I do those together.,This next part almost seems to counter all the effort I just went through, but it's worth it for the finer control. The step before this was lacking a little dimension, so what I like to do is slowly darken out from the subject. I other words, I made the corners darker again.,Finally, a bit of split-toning. To my surprise, it made the floor look a little darker (it actually isn't, but it kind of looks like it). I decided I liked it that way. The last step is me staring at the image for about a year-and-a-half without changing anything, and then eventually I'll finally convince myself that it's actually done. Once again, thanks to the photographer for loaning me something to practice on. And like I said, with any luck I may soon be able to thank the model in person sometime soon....

“Most people lie. Including when they think that nudity is something that is inappropriate and disgusting. Nudity in any condition always attracts attention, challenges and provokes curiosity. The problem is whether people want to admit that or not.”
― Titon Rahmawan

Description

I made a journal explaining this:

The Steps of One Edit,This isn't really a tutorial. I'm just showing what I did, not how I did it. I can point to some good tutorials if there's anything that isn't clear. There's 2 reasons I wanted to go with this picture. First, the photographer is ESLB-Photography (if you aren't already familiar with him, what rock have you been under?). He's already a good photographer, so there's really nothing I'm doing here he doesn't already know, and therefore won't have any bruised ego (fingers crossed). The second is the model, JenovaxLilith. Keep your fingers crossed -- she very well may be the next model I work with. I just had to turn down an opportunity to work with her last month because of logistics. Watch this space. ,This is what I started with. We tried getting the RAW file sent to me, but for some reason the only program that would recognize it wasn't an editor, so I had to go with a .jpg. Fortunately, it was at least a large file, so that helped. Right from the start, it's already an okay image. it's a good pose, and the light hitting the subject compliments her form. It's really only all the stuff around her that needed to be touched up beyond brightness/contrast. As you can see, the main light is focused right on her, so by the time it hits the top of the image there are some shadows that we don't need. And then there's the hot spot in the lower left. Ordinarily, I start an edit by going to the histogram and adjusting the lightest and darkest points. In this case, I had to hold off because there were areas brighter and darker than there would be in the final image. Sooo . . . ,I just went straight to getting the tint and temperature right. If there was something neutral grey in the image, it would be possible to do a true white balance, but honestly that level of preciseness really only has value if it's somehow imperative to have the true colors (like an ad for food, or something). Otherwise, we're talking about art, so you go for feeling. I wanted this pretty warm, but not so warm that it all just became an orange mess. While I was at it, I threw in some fill light. I also pulled down the highlights a touch (that gets fixed after I get rid of the hot spot).,Rotation. It seems really obvious to me now, but I was terrible at missing this step when I was just getting started. I'm not the only one. I see unnecessarily tilted images everywhere. It's not so easy to see because I didn't make a huge change, but I also adjusted the perspective to keep the lines parallel all the way across, and then a small (seriously just 1%) pinch to keep the boards from looking warped. That little pinch didn't significantly slim Lilith down, so I didn't have to do anything fancy like making a cutout and pasting her back on the new floor. I don't think she'll mind that I took a few ounces off her. I don't do digital cosmetic surgery, and I know a lot of models that get pissed when you do stuff like that. Note that the corners of the image aren't square. No problem. That's what content-aware fill is for.,What chair legs? Content-aware fill works really well on wood floors. I learned that with my first shoot with Rebecca. The second part of this actually took a bit of time. I literally just worked on one corner at a time. What I did was have a new layer that had the brightness, contrast, saturation, and hues looking right, and then I just did a layer mask and painted them in. I had to do the hot spot in two passes because there was just too much of a difference from the center out.,All that just to get to the beginning. Ok, so now that the dark corners and bright spot are gone, I'm finally able to do what I normally do right away. I went to the histogram to get brightness and contrast set right. I was satisfied with saturation and vibrancy, so I didn't have to change anything, but this would also be where I do that. Next I went through and cleaned up any blemishes (she has really good skin, so I'm not going to bother with the close-ups on that). I leave things like beauty marks. Then I sharpen the image before softening the skin. That's basically two sides of the same coin, so I do those together.,This next part almost seems to counter all the effort I just went through, but it's worth it for the finer control. The step before this was lacking a little dimension, so what I like to do is slowly darken out from the subject. I other words, I made the corners darker again.,Finally, a bit of split-toning. To my surprise, it made the floor look a little darker (it actually isn't, but it kind of looks like it). I decided I liked it that way. The last step is me staring at the image for about a year-and-a-half without changing anything, and then eventually I'll finally convince myself that it's actually done. Once again, thanks to the photographer for loaning me something to practice on. And like I said, with any luck I may soon be able to thank the model in person sometime soon....

“Most people lie. Including when they think that nudity is something that is inappropriate and disgusting. Nudity in any condition always attracts attention, challenges and provokes curiosity. The problem is whether people want to admit that or not.”
― Titon Rahmawan