Before and After Hop

Yah know how somethings in a busy life can get misplace, overlooked or forgotten, ever had those day?  Well today was mine.  I was sorting through a batch of photo files, thinking today's the day to clean house.  I had totally forgotten all about this one file folder.  It was a file of photo that I took while enrolled in Brooke Snows Advanced photography class.  Gosh how lame is that?  I pay for a class and don't even finish the last assignment.

As today is Before and After Hop over at Pixel Perfect I decided now was a good time to editing these photo.

The before editing photo.

Here is the original, notice anything wrong?  I do.  It's to dark, don't like the crop and I also don't like the blown out highlight that keep calling out "LOOK THIS WAY."

These are the steps that I took to correct what could be a pretty decent photography of a very fun girl.
1.  adjust white balance had to put some more light in the picture
2.  adjusted the curves layer
3.  color corrected color cast, when I adjusted the WB it left the skin a bit to pink for my liking
4.  cropped
5.  added high pass sharpening
6. masked off high pass off skin left only in eyes and hair
7.  resized
8.  saved for web.

Here is the after editing photo.  

Steps for the B&W
1.  Same steps as for color
plus
2.  Gradient Map
3.  Gradient editor added color stop
4.  Double-clicked on the color stop for color picker
5.  Slid color picker to the grey are that improved photo
6.  Ok'ed
7.  Gradient editor slid color stop to lighten or darken photo
8.  Fattened
9. Saved for web