A Cuban

[Grumpy John]

The man maybe, the cigar definitely. Taken in the Little Havana section of Miami back in 2017 when cruising was still safe.

[Ozzie_Traveller]

G'day mate

Quite dramatic - good mono tones (?incl the slight halo?)
I wonder whether a tiny bit of smoke would have made a difference?

Phil

[Grumpy John]

Thanks for the honest feedback Phil. I hadn't noticed the halo until I uploaded the image. I will revisit this image and make the necessary corrections,

[wigz]

Very nice John. Nice tones and plenty of character there. Did you do a bit of softening around the edges as there is a bit of softening there but the face looks sharp. I quite like the effect.

[Grumpy John]

Very nice John. Nice tones and plenty of character there. Did you do a bit of softening around the edges as there is a bit of softening there but the face looks sharp. I quite like the effect.

I did a selection of the background and applied a 22Px Gaussian blur to it. That is where the halo Phil spoke of came from.
I revisited the image and used masks this time and the result is a vast improvement.

[Isac]

Well done mate!. Next - try adding a Curves adjustment on top of your layer stack and drop the brights. To do that just click anywhere on the diagonal line in the Curves panel and type Input = 128 and Output = 90.

[eaglem]

There's a lot of character in that face.

[Grumpy John]

G'day mate

Quite dramatic - good mono tones (?incl the slight halo?)
I wonder whether a tiny bit of smoke would have made a difference?

Phil

Not sure if this qualifies as a tiny bit of smoke, but here goes.
Just for the record my wife much prefers the sans smoke image.

[Ozzie_Traveller]

Hi John

Yeah mate ... some people have better taste than I do so give her a chocky frog !
Visually your smoke adds a little 'something' to the image, but others here will have the final say

Phil

[Grumpy John]

I found the smoke in this edit unrealistic as it was too sharp. From what I've observed cigar smoke is a lot more "fuzzy' for want of a better word.

[Grumpy John]

I did a quick blur on all the smoke layers using tilt-shift blur, I think that this makes the smoke a bit more realistic.

.

[MJ224]

I'm beginning to smell something, a super shot...:-)