Big imagination

She can take a leaf and create a whole world with back story, intrigue, good guys, bad guys, and no ending – because the story always continues.

The original was too dark. I increased the exposure only a little. I think what helped is moving the tone curve line up. That also matted things a bit, which I wanted for this pic. I didn’t want the buildings to be too distinctive. I used an adjustment brush on her face to lighten it up and another brush to increase the contrast and clarity on her hair. I also decided to clone out the men, but I didn’t even think about cloning out the buoy in the water. I increased the vibrance and moved the tint slider towards magenta. I sharpened and decreased the noise and added a small vignette. Here’s the original:

~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~   ~~~