After cropping I used Sagelight’s median filter to blur and blend the background. Then the clone tool to adjust placement of some of the lights and darks. Then a plug-in filter, super smooth, brought the background to where I wanted it. For the girl, just a bit of enhancing on the detail before adding a soft focus – seems odd perhaps but I find that enhancing the detail before softening the focus means I don’t lose more detail than I want to. I went into Paint to fix some of the colour aberrations that I found distracting.
This is the original image.
Stacy hosts the After Before Friday challenge at Visual Venturing.
Beyond the Brush Photography 
Simply an amazing transformation that seems to suit the subject better than the original image does. This is straight out of a museum by one of the old masters. Renoir? Degas? I don’t know. I just know that I love what you’ve done. Lynne, you are amazing. I loved your work before but now? Now I have to come up with something more to explain how I feel.
Emilio, what can I say, except thank you, thank you very much.
You’re welcome, you’re welcome, very much!
Unbelievable, Lynne! Such an incredible transformation. The girl just seems to pop right off the page, as if there’s a touch of 3D, and that’s a result of all your creative choices. Fun, fun, fun 🙂
Normaly I’m not a friend of retouching fotos, but in you case I only can say “Wow, what admirable result! Great job!”
For me the fun is in the editing 🙂 Thank you cubusregio – your comment is appreciated.
Really amazing change. One would have no idea that it came from the original. Nice work.
Thank you, Robin, I was particularly pleased with this one.
Really nice, painterly look to this image. Amazing what you have done when you compare it to the before image. I think that I would have been tempted to chop a bit off the left hand side to place the girl in a less central position, but I love what you did to the image as a whole, the swish of colours coming from the girl’s hand is a lovely touch too.
Thank you, Katie. I did move my crop around a bit, looking at the rule of thirds, but in the end I preferred this one. I appreciate your input.
That is quite a transformation, I like that you cropped in and then added the filter to remove all the distracting features. Nice work.