While practising enhancement on my family photos. Huge thanks to a friend of mine who has helped me with so many resources and possibilities to apply to photography.

Also in back and white., my try

Very nice job issabella, I especially like the top one the way you have the lighting gradient around her.

Thank you Molly for your nice words. I'm happy you like my outcomes.

You have a very nice princess, in your family! You are certainly proud of her.
And she should be proud of having a ... queen mother very able in enhancing her photos!
Good job.

Thank you so much Dinasset, your are a master in photography, so your words are great to me.

Issabella she really is a little princess! Congratulations!
With these Top Model, any photo is perfect!

In the second picture the blur effect was interrupted very sharp way.
It is always a matter of taste of course.

One suggestion would be to slow down the passage with a gradient of blur for sharp.
An example.

The original black and white photo is great!

Akros,
as far as I understand, in that picture Issabella wanted to separate a central magic circle with the princess from the world around; maybe this is not noticed immediately because -in addition to the zoom blur- there was no perceivable change in luminosity.
So, another idea could be to select again tha surrounding area and apply a perceivable change in brightness (by darkening it).

Akros, you are right. I can see that, exactly now in your sample. Thank you so much for your advice. I love photographic manipulations!

Dinasset your idea is very good too. I have to learn so much from all of you. Thank you so much

Thank you Dinasset and Akros to make me improve my outcomes in photography with your help and great ideas.
I have here my final outcome with a progressive blur around.

excellent work, Issabella!l

I'm happy. Thank you so much.

let me put another child
the original comes from an old dia with colours altered from the time, scanned with a multi-function printer
the child is a boy, approx one year old
here it is



i did the following manipulations:
- levels grey pipette
- retinex
- rotate and crop
- G'mic dynamic range
- G'mic portrait retouching (only the face)
- dup layer, desaturated
- blur zoom on desat layer
- mask
- painted on the subject with a soft brush to "reveal" the underlaying coloured layer
- some limited colour adjustment

here the result

Dinasset, that child is so nice and lovely. Your outcome on the original pic is great. Fantastic your idea!

Muchas gracias!

Another try. Playing with masks.

wow, very interesting and original use of the mask!
and good selection both of the photo and of the mask position
well done

Thank you Dinasset, you're very kind.

a new exercise
more colourful (but less close to the "ancient" original)