This one goes out to T.Rex who was looking for that certain "je ne sais quoi" that turns an image from almost right to fantastic! I don't know if this is the be-all, end-all, but CURVES may have a lot to do with it. Please look at this picture full-sized for more detail! I will try to keep this short. The point is to show WHAT is possible, but I'm kind of glossing over the HOW a little bit. If you like the results, consider investigating curves in more detail. Most quality image editors feature Curves, including GIMP, which is free. I'm doing this in grayscale because it's simpler to demonstrate than color. 1. This render looked OK in color, but in black and white, it is clearly too dark. The histogram shows that most of the tones are below the 50% mark. Note that if the basic render was far too light, with big areas breaking through the white mark, STOP. Go back to your rendering program, turn down the lights, and re-render. That situation cannot be corrected in postwork. 2. The objective part: most images should have a full range of tones from light to dark. Open the Curves dialog and keep an eye on the histogram. Place the pins so that the histogram goes all the way from black to white without making "spikes" at either end. This increase in contrast will make the picture look better already, but we can go further. 3. The subjective part: You may find this hard to believe, but unless they are from the Jersey Shore, most white people want to appear PALER than they really are. (To use zone system jargon, they want to look Zone VII when they are objectively Zone VI.) Black people are a different story entirely, and we'll show that in a different picture. For this picture, this means increasing the midtone brightness a bit, but not so much that the light areas get "blocked up." I also decreased the darker areas, but only to the point where the hair still has full detail. Look at this curve. I use a very similar curve in quite a few images. 4. You might notice some "holes" in the histogram in the previous frame. This may lead to problems of "banding," or highly noticeable, abrupt changes between shades in the image. One solution to this is to add a small amount of NOISE to the image. Not enough that it looks speckled - just enough that there are no longer holes in the histogram. Don't bother unless there are some big holes. And poof! You're done! Again, I really skipped some details, but if you like this technique, I encourage you to investigate using curves. The one thing I want you to remember is: DON'T TRUST YOUR EYES, TRUST THE HISTOGRAM. If you stare at any image long enough, it will seem "right" even if it is way off or has a strong color cast. I hope this helped you!!