Thanks for the sample image and its a nice image at that. I'm curious to know which RAW converter you used, and how much you retouched this if any. 100% sample looks like the high pass skin smoothing technique was used but maybe its just the way it is?
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Hi Eric,
The raw converter is the latest SilkyPix and black and white conversion is done right there (although usually I tended to do this in Photoshop), along with some preliminary sharpening. I have experimented with this shot and sharpened it less in SilkyPix than usual, the final sharpening is SmartSharpen filter in CS2. The retouching was primarily in removing little blemishes here and there, cleaning the overall image, the floor, and enhancing the light painting with a few adjustment layers of curves with masks. The skin softening is due to minimal sharpening in SilkyPix and the B&W conversion settings. The color version shows different and more prominent skin texture, yet I did not really want to show it to avoid distraction from the smooth shapes of the model. The noise reduction settings in SiklyPix were set to 0, along with moire removal (false color) to make development the sharpest, along with 100% demosaic sharp.