As promised -

Some asked for the original to work on - here is a jpg. If you want the full NEF (I'll convert to tiff) e-mail and I'll drop it somewhere and send you a link.

Nice portrait. Briefly the steps are as follows:

Open in ACR and make some basic adjustments - increase exp., fill light, and recovery.
Duplicate layer. Use apply image with invert checked to copy the green (or blue?) channel over the duplicate layer. Pick the best channel to copy or try both. Change the blend mode to overlay. This will lighten the face. Also, you need blur the copy of the channel using gaussian blur.

Here's a version with ACR changes, some clone stamp work, USM, Hue/Saturation color and color balance changes, dodging, selective gaussian blur, and some vignette:

Or a toned mono with a little cropping, additional blur and a few tweaks:

my 5minute contribution.

OK, here is another ...

I really like aunti's toned version.

I had a play but couldn't get a feel for the shot. (Actually I think its more I'm too lazy to do a careful select around the edge of the hat!)

I'll look at it again later and see if anything springs to mind.

Paul

Thanks Paul,

I know what I want but have been unable to get there

Bob