A few obvious things missing...
1) Colour adjustment. Sometimes the WB needs a little tweak. Sometimes the colour saturation can do with a boost.
2) Lighten the eyes, and possibly teeth. I normally add a dodge layer, paint the eyes and the teeth totally white, and then reduce the dodge layer opacity to something reasonable. Often, it is less than 10% opacity, but it helps.
3) USM after resize. Given that you are using a soft-blur effect, you might want to USM on a seperate layer and only sharpen some areas, such as the eyes and other facial features.
4) Depending on the image, a subtle vignette can be a nice touch, just to focus the image.
Not every image will need all these things, but they are things that I often add. |