advice on cropped portrait

Trying to see which of these two looks better from the portrait when cropping. Had a small birthday party at a friend's house and am trying to process some images, and I am split minded regarding this one.
The little girl has beautiful eyes and the expression is lovely in my view and cropping it closer enhances the eye expression.
But again looking at the other image it also looks good as it casts an idea on the sorrounding where something caught her attention.

Advice and comments please and any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Many thanks in advance

Amin

Gosh, I just noticed now that when I open the images on the second monitor I have where I keep the browsers open the images look quite flat without any warm colours. This is an LG L206WU monitor, while the monitor where I do the post processing work in there the image comes up with warm colours, a huge difference in contrasts of the colours. The other one is an old Viewsonic monitor a VP191S. Definitely the image looks much better with warmer colours, but I am now wondering if its just my LG monitor that makes the image so flat lookng, without any warm colours.
Could someone also please tell me how the images look in the monitor particularly regarding the contrast and if the colours are very flat looking please?

I think I have had it with dodgy monitors now. I guess its time to upgrade and get something I can rely on when working on images.

Look fine on mine Amin.

ooh, that was a relief Tel, thank you so much.
Its so tricky having two monitors that differ so much in contrast. I really need to get one that I can rely for post processing work.

I might as well ask for recommendations for monitors from the forum members then, so anyone here with some advice on which monitor to go for please?
Thanks

Amin, I don't know what browser you are using but maybe it is the case of colour management (lack of it) in the browser.
http://www.dria.org/wordpress/archives/2008/04/29/633/
Regarding the monitor, we could try to advice something, sure for colour work 100% advice is don't buy any LCD based on a TN pannel , say what size/resolution you need and what are the funds... (perfectly honest, LCD for colour work if you have larger budget - Eizo and NEC are the best, then, after some gap you have the rest ).
If you have a bit bigger budged I could point you to some Eizo/NECs and I'm quite sure that when compared to the "typical" home LCD you would really appreciate the difference.
And lastly, pics looks ok to me, very warm.

Well I actually use a 19" LG HD TV for a monitor which I find great.
When it comes to monitors you get what you pay for but also different types of monitors act differently.

I.E. Old CRT type are dark compared to LCD and the same goes for contrast, warmth etc.

Also though your graphics card can alter things as it renders the images on your screen, I have ATI cards in my PC and within the control centre I can adjust things like color adjustment as well as the obvious things like resolution.

So in my opinion there is no easy way to say yay or ney lol.

I found the best way to "tune" a monitor is to take a image you know well maby a fmaily pet or something and tune it acordingly to make the picture look true to life.

In regards to your pics I prefer the first one, I cant see what the girl would be looking at in the second one except what seems to be someones shoulder? Which I find distracting.
I agree she has lovely eyes so I would go for the first which shows them off beter, allthough ide crop a lil lower to get her chin in the pic.

This is but my humble opinion though. As usual tho amin, great work

Nothing wrong on my screen, Amin. Personally I like the first one the most.
The surroundings don't add anything important IMO, and I could do without the piece of backpack and the shouting hair clip.
It's all about those wonderful eyes, and that is what you get in the first one.

Martin.

PS, There were several discussions on the monitor issue, last couple of months. Just use the search option.

Piotro, thank you for putting some thought on this and helping me out specially with the monitor.
My luck is my work system is due for upgrade now so I can splash a bit from the budget and I was thinking kind of anything under £500, would that get me something decent? Of course the lesser I spend on the monitor the better as I get more left to top up for the rest of the system.

Am completely open for suggestions regarding sizes/resolutions etc

thanks for helping. Going to check that link now

What lens did you use Amin? The 60-250?

Looks superb. Her skin looks gorgeous (assuming she has an olive complexion).

The crop is difficult. The expression is superb and the choice of whether or not to crop is a personal one. My view is make a decision and stick to it. But if pushed I prefer the uncropped, simply becasue I think it makes her expesssion less-ambiguous.

One important note, working with LCd use theire native resolution always, often you may use other resolutions, but this is thanks to different approximation, streching, cuting techniques - means big lose in quality, always use native, and hence the question, if LCD size dictates what resolution you will use, you have to know what resolution you want to worki with and if your PC/graphics card supports that.

Martin and Lil Andy, thank you very much for your input.

Martin, thanks for reminding me that there has been some discussion on the threads, will check around.

Seems like the consensus is for the first picture. I was already leaning towards that myself, but then wasn't sure .

I agree - but i'd crop in a little to remove the black shoulder.

Yup, she has olive complexion, a very beautiful mixture. Dad french white, blue eyes and blonde lol, and mum Mauritian, with a mixture of indian and african. No wonder the girl has that skin and eyes

Bob, yes, this was taken with the 60-250 how did you guess?

And this is how I like it best:
[IMG]http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/7184/imgp4829ppresizeda.jpg[/IMG]