Shopped and Cropped

[rixafter6]

Okay I'm a coward. I read John Paul's thread on manipulating images beyond the conventional touchup's and brought this picture right over here instead of posting it on the Main Forum. I may be crazy but I'm not stupid.

Here's the original image:



And what I did to it. I did a lot of blending and selective sharpening in Photoshop 7 and then cropped it to this:



Too Much? Should have got the lighting right the first time-but since I didn't-do you think it's recoverable? What is your take on this and what would you do to make it better than the original.

Rick D. (© rick davenport 2004)