Hello, thanks for all your suggestions, I've come a bit further (I think) and have added CFS027 which is my latest. Skin still looks a bit spotty and not as smooth as the original skin (under all the defects). Is there anything more that can be done to CFS027 to improve it? I'm still trying to pick up the tricks.

welcome to RP.

yup, it's easy to wash the skin out when fixing so much damage. you've done a great job, but you might try masking the skin in the washed areas and adding some noise and then softening or blurring it a bit. the best settings for adding noise to skin are usually quite low, like 5 or under, but it just depends on the image.

basically, looking at a side by side of the two images, you appear to have lightened the face also. some shadow and darkening here and there would give it a more natural look also.

but a nice job overall.

Craig

also, you might take a look at what flora did in this thread: http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5505

Craig

Hi CFS,

had a quick go with your image.

Bit short on time at the moment, if you'd like a breakdown of what I did, I can tell you later.

After a quick play with photo without full touch up by any means, that vacant lighted area I found could be toned quite substantially by sampling a colour in the vicinity and then creating a new layer and painting (infill) over the area using 'color mode'. After filling in area, I reduced the fill value of the layer so it blended. After that a quick burn of the lips and it looked pretty natural.

8/11 Added CFS028, my latest attempt.

Overall I think you are getting there, when you look at the photo it is fairly flat anyway which makes it less than satisfying, only one other comment, some of the lines are still a little apparent. Maybe after you have been working on the image, take a break for an hour or so and then come back and look at it again. Personally I think your second last image looks better...sorry :( nah, hard call that one