The high key shots were aided by Photoshop. I think I was unclear in my comment about it on the PaD (yeah, I are a gud riter sometimes). When I said I thought she looked good without any PS-ing, I meant I thought she looked great in the standard portrait, unretouched shots, but she liked the PS'd high key better.
To do the soft high keys, as opposed to the more contrasty one, I actually started with your technique of copying her face and making a 'mask' to soften her skin tone just a little - erasing the eyes and mouth to keep those sharp. After that was copied back onto the original, reducing the opacity some, I went to hue/saturation and desaturated it enough to maintain color in her hair, lips and eyes; then went to brightness/contrast and boosted those.
Kaci is a fantastic model. We've talked a few times about my taking some non-traditional senior portraits of her. I told her I thought it would be so much fun, I'd do it for free.
These are really beautiful shots, Donna. On the high key shot that you used for your PAD (top right here), how did you accomplish the effect w/o Photoshop? Since the EXIF data aren't there, I'm very interested in your technique.
