new sarah pics | Family and Kids Photos | Photo Forum

I actually agree with Mandrake, if you use a few tools in photoshop it doesn’t mean the photo is manipulated it simply edited in photoshop or other photo processing application. In fact if you shoot jpeg your cameras software does some editing like contrast, vibrance, sharpening and such. I bet every photo that people post to this forum is edited but only a few are manipulated in the way that it simply was impossible to capture in camera so it involved a complicated process of blending multiple plates that where shot separately sometimes in the different locations, some things might even been created manually in photoshop. I have thousands of photos that i captured, but only about 10 consider manipulated the rest are simply edited. I am sorry for being strait forward with my comment, I didn’t mean to offend any one.

I like the second photo better it is well composed, the subject looks more relaxed, and i like horizontal crop better but thats just personal taste. The first photos background is a bit busy also the facial expression of the subject sims like she was in the middle of saying something and look a bit tense. The hair is a bit messy over the eyes in both portraits which could be removed in photoshop, but I always try to pay attention to this when shooting so I don’t have to do it. When shooting portraits I use single focus point set to one of the eyes, both of the photos look a bit soft, try using some photoshop tools to fix that.