Gentlemen,
This is all very very good feedback and I greatly appreciate it. Let me explain myself here a bit.
On my journey with this, my main concentration has been to learn the techniques with the tools. I have not graduated to the point to where I am attempting to create drop dead gorgeous reality. I have learned about new software tools that are out there, mainly from Tom's comments and I have acquired some of them. I recently got Color Mechanic, the whole Nik suite, and a while ago Topaz. I have been trying these out to try and achieve pleasing results with a fairly minimal effort. So what your seeing HERE is primarily the use of some of those tools. I believe the skin color was actually applied using Nik. However, I did make some adjustment to it and as you can see, the CMYK values are pretty darn close to what Tom taught me they should be.
As to the smudge on the lip, that was in the original and I did not do anything other than mask the lips and boost the saturation. I wanted her to look like she had put on some makeup without looking like a hooker. iDad said he liked those kissable looking lips, so I was trying to accomplish that result. (I'd kiss that lovely in a second!)Edit: (the girl-not iDad!:redface
I should have edited out that smudge though.
Thanks again but I doubt that in the end my learned skills here are going to be in the area of glamour photography. Right now, my real life project is the creation of tempered glass cutting boards with dye sublimated photos of churches, new houses and business logos that are viewed from the cutting surface of the board. Highly saturated color is required here, not because it is technically correct, but because it SELLS! So as you can see, there is a method to my madness so to speak,
Great weekend guys!