Retouch of a studio portrait

[Renee]

So a friend of mine gave this to me and wanted me to enhance it. The contrast was wrong and he didn't like some of the other elements present on his subject. I didn't change the wrist cuff, although I wish I could it's ugly.

[Hoogle]

and an after after attempt lol

[Hoogle]

Ok it deleted my message with this with what I did do you require it

[Renee]

Please a brief explanation should work. I like the red tones that you put in her hair also.

[Hoogle]

this was a few hours ago now so here we go
step 1 select clone stamp tool and clone the jeans over the edge of the sweat band on wrist
step 2 clone the arm over the wrist band
step 3 lower opacity of clone stamp to 50% andkeep cloning in circular motions to smooth out original cloning marks repeat this for stretch marks above jeans in center
step 4 duplicate the whole image and boost exposure right up and apply a layer mask so it should almost be blown out white background
step 5 with layer mask selected use a soft large brush at 50% opacity and paint in black tho bring back the model to the required amount
step 6 create a new layer and paint in red at 100% opacity over the hair and set the layer blending mode to colour and reduce layer opacity to the desired effect
step 6 same as previous but with lips
step 7 flatten image and go to image >adjustments >photofilter and apply a warming filter to your liking
step 8 well your done just fine tweaking

[Renee]

That's a big help! I'm a self taught photoshop newbie. I don't know why It hadn't occured to me that I could make the clone less obvious by lowering the opacity! That's great! Your amazing! I can't wait to play with the effect in hair also!

[Hoogle]

I started photoshop purely for this work and have learnt a lot along the way and it is simple tricks like that, that make life a lot easier