Touch up

Here is what I started with an 8bit RGB file.

I started by cropping out the outer edge of the picture and did a bit of touch up in levels


I felt like there was too much green in the picture so I used color balance to add more Magenta


I used the spot healing brush, patch tool and clone stamp tool to fix the blemishes on her face


Up next I used the magic wand tool to select the background and duplicated a layer of the inverse so I could do something about the background.


Added a gradient layer behind the layer above.

The edges were really nasty so I added a layer mask and started working on the photo some more.

I felt like the gradient layer wasn't mixing very well so I changed the gradient colors and added a bit of noise.


Then I decided to paint her sweater a different color with another layer, blend mode: color (nondestructive).


Then I brought more detail to the image by creating an overlay highpass layer.


Unsharpmask and faded it @ 85% luminosity

Result,

I felt like her eyes weren't "popping" as much so I used the dodged tool and worked on her eyes for a bit and this is what I got.

That's it for now :)