black and white manip

[EviL_inK]

just kinda playin around with stuff

original:

outcome:

[cc.RadillacVIII]

You did a good job on the colors but as you can see the highlight are very dull and creamy. Take her skin for example, the highlight there aren't very natural looking. Same goes for the highlight of the wood and fabric.
So what you need to do is adjusting the highlight of the whole piece.
Try playing around with adjustment layers such as "color balance/selective color/levels. Experiment until you get something natural looking and throw in other adjustments as well if needed.

You picked this color thing up pretty fast, I'm proud of you

[EviL_inK]

will do. thanks for all the tips radd

[Dolce]

This is a difficult original to work with if you're new to recoloring. This is largely because, as Rad said, whoever took the photo did so in a way that caused the highlights to become oversaturated and creamy looking.

That being said, you made the situation worse by darkening the shadows. Don't worry -too- much about changing the contrast that already exists.

Another note, you're creating color contrast by using a normal skin tone for the shadowed areas, but the highlights have an almost blue/green whiteness to them, which is really offputting when it's right next to the normal skin tone.
It's true that something like sunlight will impart different colors of light, which is a HUGE part of making recolors look normal, but you've gone in the wrong direction here.

It's a great piece, just trying to give you C&C that'll help you improve.

[EviL_inK]

my first real attempt, i know i have a lot to work on hahah

[Ill_Method]

I bet he made a B/W and said it was the original...

[EviL_inK]

lol? no. pretty easy to tell which is the original

[Distello]

Take is as a compliment^ xD
I like it tbh, I mean there are some points that are pretty poo but you can't expect perfection from a colourization, the skin is the only part I dislike but there really isn't much you can do about that given that the original image her face was almost completely white.
Nice job man.

[EviL_inK]

haha thank man