I am pretty new to the retouching thing, and I wanted to get a critique, and maybe some helpful hints.

One is a photo I fixed for a friend of a friend, with the before and after attached. You can see the photo I started with was pretty poor quality. The skin is a little too smooth, but There wasn't a lot of capture of detail in the original photo. I played with the colors, to get rid of the yellow, a bit of sharpening, getting rid of the background.. etc.

The second set is a photo I took of a friend (also a beginner there!) and then an edit I did just for fun to change her make up and etc. I changed make up colors, eye color, edited the shape of her eyebrows, changed her skin tone and obviously did a poor job of burning out the background ;) I also changed the shape of the eyeliner slightly.

So yeah, that's it for now. I am using Photoshop CS.

So, how come nobody has bothered to pay attention to this post? My reason is having spent a few months in France, where Internet hasn't catched on yet. Anyway... The attached photos are both overexposed, which for the second one creates a proper effect. Like how you have matched the color of her lips to that of her hair, but burning out the background was, in my eyes, a mistake. What about darkening it a tad instead. And may I suggest to attend to her droopy right eye. By the way, nice touch-up of the eyleiner.

In the first photo, the lady's forehead looks blotchy. And I would remove the darkest shadow on the left side of her lip. But other than that you're pretty much ready to go. :)