Irish Boy

[mikemeister_admin]

Here is my example using smart layers.

[ggroess]

Barry he looks wonderful...

Great job...

[-default]

I'm seeing some large areas of pure black in the boy's clothing and shoes.  I would consider these to be important parts of the image, where detail should be preserved.  If you adjusted the image by eye, try a new pass using "by the numbers", meaning relying on numeric sample values as well as curvemeister's shadow and highlight feature. Using a shadow of RGB(10,10,10) would help, as well as positioning the shadow point to break up areas of solid black.