Damien Symonds

First question, have you tried Frequency Separation? I think it's ideal for this kind of thing.

Yes, finish the wedding first.

Once you fix all the masking it'll be ok. But leave some more shadow on the wall at the left side. It doesn't need to be so bright.

Yeah, that might work! Have you given it a try?

Hi Nick, may I see a 100% crop of the worst area?

Definitely start here. By the way, I'm going to move this post into Brian's Mac section, where he'll be able to help you better than I can.

No, scrap it.

Yes, exactly what Kim said.

Regarding the actual skin issue, did you try the Dust & Scratches filter? It's very fast, and does a fair job for very little effort. This was with the values of 20/5:

Obviously it's necessary (though difficult) for me to accept that not everyone wants their photos to be good, so I'll drop the noise thing. The next problem you have is the colour space. Please follow this to fix it.

Yes, and you said grey was an option. The next step is to add a Hue/Saturation layer, and clip it (Cmd Opt G) to the Channel Mixer layer. Then lower its Lightness slider to your taste.

No! You don't need new prints. Any recent prints you have are fine.

They look ok. The next thing we need to discuss is the light in your room.

Lol, yeah, invert the mask!

Nobody is talking about overprocessing.

Yes, for heaven's sake don't get a Mac. http://www.damiensymonds.net/2015/07/buying-mac-or-pc.html

As a first step, add a Channel Mixer adjustment layer, check the "Monochrome" checkbox, and enter 0, +100, 0 for the three values. Then mask it onto the shirt. Show me the result. You'll find you don't need to be too precise with your masking around the hair. That's the beauty of this method. You will need to be precise with a small brush along the straighter edges. Use this.

How long since you last used the Spyder successfully?

ok, can you post a couple of the photos here?

Yes, just crop it a tiny bit loose.

For as long as you persevered with this flawed reasoning, your photos cannot be their best. Please update your thinking.

Please follow my calibration instructions to the letter. It might make a small difference, but probably not as much difference as you're talking about here. How many prints do you have there with you?

Please, I beg you, let me change your life. Notwithstanding the flaws in your raw processing, she is a very shiny person, isn't she? After you've fixed the raw processing, I suggest you try this for the shiny bright areas. And this for the hot shadow areas.

For the ACR screenshot, can you show me the Detail panel so I can see your noise removal settings?

Here's the file