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Home » Challenges » Retouching Challenges » Retouching Challenge #44

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Lorraine Senior Member Registered: September 2001 Location: Flemington, NJ Posts: 219 users gallery	Mainly tried to sharpen the features of the girl and to de-emphasize the background. Image/Adjustments/Exposure – Offset 0.0150. Unsharp Mask 66/8.2/69 Smoothed skin slightly by duplicating layer and applying Filter, Distort/Diffuse Glow – 1/2/16. Set that layer opacity to 35%. Copy merged with original layer. Selected eyes and mouth. Copied to new layer. Sharpened and adjusted layer opacity. Merged layers. Selected girl and bouquet. Copied to new layer. Applied gaussian blur to the layer beneath to further blur the background. Painted over the brighter portions of background with green in color blend mode. Merged layers. Curves adjustment to intensify highlights and shadows. Duplicated layer and ran the High Pass Filter to bring in more detail. Erased the background portion of the high pass filter layer to keep the background blurring. Lorraine
	· Date: 12/3/2006 · Views: 4085 · Filesize: 39.3kb, 195.6kb · Dimensions: 640 x 800 ·
	Additional Info
	Keywords: Retouching Sweet 16
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CJ Swartz

Senior Member

Registered: September 2001
Location: Metro Phoenix area, Arizona
Posts: 3,342

12/3/2006 2:08pm

Lorraine, I like your background better than mine. I like Diffuse Glow but have never used it as you did -- something I'll have to try. Good color, and she's certainly the center of attention.

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CJ (using CS5 on Win 7 )

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Lorraine

Senior Member

Registered: September 2001
Location: Flemington, NJ
Posts: 219

12/3/2006 5:42pm

Thanks, CJ.

Retouching is not my strong point and I'm trying to work on that skill.

I saw Diffuse Glow used to bring in life into a blurry photo. Vikki Hansen is the person who used it with amazing results. I've tried it a few times without too much success, but this time it worked fairly well.

I hoped to bring out the youthful glow of a sixteen-year old, and that's why I chose to try it.

I'm still uncertain as to whether or not I should have gone for a more dramatic retouch, but I thought the natural look with her youthful freckles would be a better first step.

Lorraine

Cassidy
Senior Member

Registered: September 2002
Location: Australia
Posts: 1,104

12/3/2006 8:34pm

Looks good Lorraine, interesting use of diffuse glow. Think it looks better not so dramatic.

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Cass

Lorraine

Senior Member

Registered: September 2001
Location: Flemington, NJ
Posts: 219

12/4/2006 5:11am

Cassidy,

Thanks for your comments and advice.

Lorraine

Goose3
Junior Member

Registered: November 2006

12/4/2006 12:08pm

Nice sharpening and thank you for the descriptive text on how you accomplished it. The image looks very natural.

Lorraine

Senior Member

Registered: September 2001
Location: Flemington, NJ
Posts: 219

12/4/2006 3:46pm

Thank you, Goose3, and welcome to RetouchPRO.

Lorraine

Thomrose
Junior Member

Registered: December 2006

12/13/2006 4:37pm

Lorraine,

Everyone is different in their approaches- I just found the site and decided to work only on her face- not even worrying about the background. After seeing your background- I wish I had worked on mine. I use diffuse glow in wedding pictures all the time, nice touch here.

Lorraine

Senior Member

Registered: September 2001
Location: Flemington, NJ
Posts: 219

12/14/2006 6:01am

Thank you Thomrose. The background distracted me so much while I was working on the photo that I tried to minimize it.

Welcome to RetouchPro.

Lorraine

Janet Petty

Senior Member

Registered: January 2004
Location: Mid-South
Posts: 2,111

12/30/2006 5:16pm

Superb results Lorraine. I'm going to have to try your technique.

Janet

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E Z T D B W

Lorraine

Senior Member

Registered: September 2001
Location: Flemington, NJ
Posts: 219

1/3/2007 4:58am

Hi Janet,

Thank you so much. I always appreciate your comments.

Lorraine

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