Woman
My first step was to crop out just the photo. I then used the Fade Correction option under Effects/Enhance Photo. After doing that, I used the Clarify option. That brightened up the photo. Then I used the 3 automatic adjustments under the Effects/Enhance Photo menu (color, contrast and saturation).
Once I got the colors and brightness adjusted the way that looked pleasing to me, I went to the Effects/Noise menu and tried the Salt & Pepper filter and the Texture Preserving Smooth filter.
I then started using the Retouch tool extensively some with the smudge, but mostly the soften option. Using the soften option, I adjusted the size and opacity of the setting depending on which areas I was working on. Around the eyes and mouth, the brush had to be very small. I also used the clone and airbrush on the teeth and mouth.
Once she looked good to me, I selected the background. That's the hardest part for me getting just the background without getting into her hair and clothing. Once I had the background selected (using the Magic Wand with varying degrees of tolerance and using the shift key to add to my selections), I flood filled the background with a Granite pattern. Then with the background still selected, I applied a Gausian Blur to it and colorized it to match the frame.
I was comparing my edited version to the original and noticed that she looks thinner in mine. I knew I hadn't resized the image at all, so that puzzled me until I noticed that I had inadvertently selected a part of her collar (under her right ear) when I flood filled with the pattern. I believe that's why her face looks thinner in my edited version. I would want to do more work on her left sleeve, too.
It took me approximately an hour or a little more to do this project.
mzbet
