Good call on the painterly edit. Beautiful image and little girl. I love her expression and gaze.
On my admittedly un-calibrated iMac monitor, the white bib looks just a little too bright IMHO. If that could be toned down a bit, I think it would highlight her wonderful face even more - but that could be my monitor. Regardless, this is really a wonderful portrait!
Good choice on post processing! I like the look on her face and on the background.
I feel the dress needs more work to make it fit better with the painterly style. One possibility of treatment would be to create and B&W layer with a mask and paint it in over the dress, setting the opacity just high enough to tone down the saturation of the dress. Adding another layer for the dress with a little yellow or faded color might help as well.
I really like this. Great work and vision based on the original "snapshot". Yes, highlights are a bit blow, but it's all about the light and that beautiful face to me.
I think you've got a good knowledge of fine art to get this done so well. Love the green in fact as the old masters used to exaggerate the green midtones in some schools. Would be very interested to see a little tutorial or a better explanation to how you get these results.
