Yes, it's a 100% crop. The settings of the camera was normal sharpening. As far as PP, some USM, dup layer, gauss blur, set opac, clean up around the eyes and mouth with history brush and flatten using PS CS. I hear that CS3 offers better sharpening algorithms than CS but I haven't gotten around to upgrading as I need to upgrade my skill set first. Anyways, the shot was done with an "old" D70 with the kit 18-70 lens. I get ridiculed about my gear often by my "pro" photog buddies who buy the latest wiz bang, golly gee, item of the moment. Quite honestly, I would pay them not to photograph me or my family as I don't think too highly of their work. But their target audience may have lower standards than me (they remind me of that their clients just want a picture, and that's exactly what they are giving them. When I mention things like the color looks funny or shouldn't one focus on the eyes instead of the tip of the nose, they roll their eyes) I'm soapboxing here.
Back to the picture. I borrowed an Apple cinema display just to look at the picture after reading your comments here. I knew my monitor's color management was a joke but I didn't realize how much detail information was being tossed. So, yes, I see that it is indeed soft. I did attempt to calibrate the monitor using Eye one display 2, but the monitor has this nice X shaped area that's out of wack, seems to be a design "feature" of the particular monitor that I have, but the general audience doesn't notice.... so the salesmen says. But that only handles color and I don't think it helps out on the sharpness. Like I said, I'm new to all of this (outside of just using the camera as a glorified point and shoot, but the wife wanted me to take up a safer hobby so she got me the camera a couple years back and PS CS to go with it, I'm getting to where I'm having fun doing this and now want to improve my skills) I really enjoyed Rolando's workshop and glad that my wife strongly suggested that I attend it as it did give me lots to ponder and areas to work on. Anyways, I'm a believer in feedback in order to improve the quality of a product (any folks working in an Agile shop knows how important quick and constant feedback is) and I thank you gentlemen for the response. A mea culpa is in order for the verbosity of this "quick reply"
John
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