Im a Long Time First Time to this forum....and new to post processing....this picture is straight out of the camera, untouched....I would like suggestions and advice on what to do next, cropping, retouching, adjusting stuff, any ideal effects for this type of image. I have LightRoom, DPP, and Photoshop 6. I have this image in RAW as well.

I look forward to seeing what you have to say.

This was my first crack at it.

Aren't kids great subjects! Such concentration, I'm sure this is the first image of many to come.

Some general comments, realize these are just my opinion:

The subject looks a bit soft - my eyes are drawn to the portion of the chair back that is in focus - left rear - focus is all about the eyes.

Since you have the RAW version, try to recover the blocked highlights: left side of face, shoulder, arm, abdomen, and leg.

His face, skin tones, are picking up a brown cast from light reflecting off the chair arm.

Regardless, a delightful capture -enjoy the opportunities - our grandkids (3 and 2) are on the other side of the US, we can visit but two, three times a year if lucky. Hope to fill up more than several CF cards during our next visit in July.

Also, it would help if you kept the exif data attached - I know you can do that in flickr - just don't recall how.

regards,

Bob

Thanks for the comments Bob, I saw on a forum on flickr that the EXIF data is only retained on the original image....and since I dont have a pro account I only have access to the resized smaller images that have the EXIF data stripped. Bummer .

In the future I will include the camera setup with the photo.......

This shot was:

Camera Model Canon EOS 20D
Shooting Mode Aperture-Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed ) 1/80
Av( Aperture Value ) 2.8
Metering Mode Evaluative Metering
Exposure Compensation +2/3
ISO Speed 1600
Lens 50.0 mm
Focal Length 50.0 mm
Image Size 3504x2336
Image Quality Fine
Flash Off
White Balance Mode Flash
AF Mode One-Shot AF
Parameters Settings Contrast Mid. High
Sharpness High
Color saturation Mid. High
Color tone +1
Color Space sRGB
Noise Reduction Off

The repost is better but you have changed the eye color to the green.

Cropping is good on this but I would get all his toes. Rule of thumb is to not frame through joints.

Taking pictures with light streaming in from the window is difficult with the contrast in exposure. You have overexposed the skin and its hard to fix. And the focus is behind on the couch not his eyes.

But he is a cute one so try it again.

My usual steps are:
Open in Photoshop
ctrl l and adjust triangles in while holding down alt to get white balance right
then using curves to get best color
then ctrl l again and click grey if the white balance is off
then shadows/hightlights to see if improved
then saturation if it needs more
then sharpening

If it is a more difficult shot - like you have above you might try opening raw with underexosure and then opening normalling and painting over the overexposed area to bring it back. I can't do this with yours because I don't have raw.