I am working on this myself, but I wanted to get some hints from other people. (Note: This is a photo of me.. so feel free to do what you want!)

Here is what I am aiming to correct:

Less redness and pitmarks in my face.
Make that little fat pudgy mark near my lips at the bottom of my cheek go away.
Fix my crazy eyebrows (need a wax.. meep).
Fix the hair that is all over the place above/beside my eyebrow.
Remove the little hair sticking out on the black background along my eyes/eyebrow area.
One of my fingernails is chipped, going to fix that too.

Also, this one is more minor to me, but you'll notice my hair is lighter at the ends, I'm growing out many years of hair dying, but I wasn't sure of a good way to fix that.. Any tips?

And if you want to go a little crazier as well, go for it.. :) Please post techniques, as I want to learn more! I will post my edited version later on. I need to learn not to rush it.. I'm bad about that.

FULL SIZE GIGANTO IMAGE: http://www.auroraskye.com/LJ/IMG_7261.JPG

Hi, thanks for providing a large version of this.
I had a go at it.

curves and color balance
Clone - skin, eyebrows, some hair
Changed hair color to red using h/s/l layer then used brush to mask out the areas I didn't want changed.
color balance one more time
used virtual photo plug-in to add a minimal glamor effect.

This needs more work, but I thought I'd post what I have so far. :)

Byro's Degrunge x 2 (found in tutorial section here)
Clone for beneath lip
Clone for stray hairs
Clone for eyebrows
Clone for Nail chip
Selected colour from upper portion of hair, painted over discoloured hair in colour blending mode and then using Hue/Saturation/Lightness, dropped the lightness of the painted layer to blend with top better.
The purple distant glow is my choice of a blotch of purple heavily gaussian blurred.

Thanks for all the replies, these are helpful tips. Cathy, I like how painting-like yours looks, that's awesome.

Here's my version:

http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c98/DaWiel/Untitled-1.jpg

Not really a fashion version, but just a nice clean version.

I had a try too between work photos.

Heal brush for larger marks
My own blend of skin smoothing
Slight Liquify for eyebrows
Increased the eye colour, added higlights to them.
Pronounced make-up a bit more on eyes and mouth.
'Amy Dresser' highlighting and carving.
(slight) nose reshape.
Clone for nail
Mix of copy other hair and clone for hairs
Simple Dodge and Burn for hair colour
Added a Grad fill to add some interest to background

Very nice photo. Bgggest corrections were to the hair and skin plus a number of smaller "adjustments".

Aurora

1. "Less redness and pitmarks in your face" I used the healing brush here - very soft brush, new layer, constantly sampling and the radius of the brush no bigger than the spot. If you don't like the result go one step backward, resample and try again until it looks natural. I also desaturated the image by about a third.

2. "Make that little fat pudgy mark near my lips at the bottom of my cheek go away" Dodge the shadow away, blend with the healing brush and use the Liquify tool if necessary.

3. "Fix my crazy eyebrows (need a wax.. meep)." I used the Liquify tool to lift up your eyebrow, dodged away the darker hairs and blended with the healing brush.

4. "Fix the hair that is all over the place above/beside my eyebrow" Again, dodge away the darker hairs and clean it up with the Healing Brush, dodge and burn again if necessary.

5. "Remove the little hair sticking out on the black background along my eyes/eyebrow area.
One of my fingernails is chipped, going to fix that too." Both of these are easily fixed with the clone tool. As the background is black and has no pattern you don't have to be particularly careful either.

6. "Also, this one is more minor to me, but you'll notice my hair is lighter at the ends, I'm growing out many years of hair dying, but I wasn't sure of a good way to fix that.. Any tips?" Open a new layer, sample your natural hair color and with a low opacity brush and the layer's blend mode set to color, paint away. Stop when it looks natural.

Sincerely Syd

So here's my try.

This is going to sound harsh, but it seems like a number of the issues with the photograph are things you could have taken care of before the photograph was even taken. We all like to think Photoshop can work magic, and in some cases it can really do some amazing things, but I always say you can make a good photo great and a great photo outstanding, but you can't make an average photo outstanding (at least without a LOT of work). You really should have taken care of your eyebrows and applied a better foundation before taking the picture. Lip gloss and some clumpy eye lashes ain't gonna cut it except for the masochistic of us. I had a good 15 layers of corrections.

I can go into detail if anyone wants more of the specifics of what I did. Just let me know.

So here's my try.

This is going to sound harsh, but it seems like a number of the issues with the photograph are things you could have taken care of before the photograph was even taken. We all like to think Photoshop can work magic, and in some cases it can really do some amazing things, but I always say you can make a good photo great and a great photo outstanding, but you can't make an average photo outstanding (at least without a LOT of work). You really should have taken care of your eyebrows and applied a better foundation before taking the picture. Lip gloss and some clumpy eye lashes ain't gonna cut it except for the masochistic of us. I had a good 15 layers of corrections.

I can go into detail if anyone wants more of the specifics of what I did. Just let me know.

Yes, I know. I'm aware of that. Hence the remark about getting my eyebrows waxed. I wasn't wearing any foundation, which I should have. But a little late now. So, it's just something to keep in mind in the future. I also think that you did mean to sound harsh, as I could have given the same "constructive" criticism in a much more polite way. But I appreciate it, none the less.

I'm sorry about sounding mean. Please understand it wasn't directed at you and I'm really glad you're working on your skills and I try to be supportive in this environment because we're all learning and growing. It's my cranky attitude and I apologize. :-)

However, you'll find, as you take on retouching more and more seriously, it's definitely an issue you're going to face. You'll be frustrated in that you could have done so much more, so much simpler, if only the subject was styled better or the photographer took a better shot in the first place. You'll have people that expect miracles, and if you put enough time in you could make some magic, but it's not an efficient workflow if you're doing 90% of the work to get a shot to look a certain way.

That's all, just some wisdom from someone a little further down the road. Happy retouching!

Thank you for letting me play (learn) with your photo.
Used liquify for eyebrows
Healing brush for skin
Blur with mask for powder
Curves to creat color and darken/highlight areas
Added eye lashes
Hope the "make up" colors are not too bad.

Fixed those minor imperfections and also gave you a slight nose straigtening.

For some reason I couldn't download the giganto image from your link ... this is from the thumbnail.

Stosh

I actually just went at this before reading your list so it's interesting to see what I hit and missed... I saw a giganto image and got excited :)

>Less redness and pitmarks in my face.
-General healing brush for the pit marks. I work really small/detailed for this. I'm not sure about the redness you're concerned with.

>Make that little fat pudgy mark near my lips at the bottom of my cheek go away.
-Duplicate layer, make a curves adjustment to make it noticeably lighter, add a "hide all" mask (black) and paint in the lightness with white on the mask... I used this other place but not there so much.

>Fix my crazy eyebrows (need a wax.. meep).
-Cloning and healing brushes.

>Fix the hair that is all over the place above/beside my eyebrow.
-Cloning and healing - I didn't go as far as you'd like there I'd imagine, I was getting frustrated, moved on and didn't get back to it.

>Remove the little hair sticking out on the black background along my eyes/eyebrow area.
-Burn tool, hit highlights and midtones where you want to remove it. I kept the brow and lashes that are sticking out from the other side of the face.

>One of my fingernails is chipped, going to fix that too.
-Cloning and a little dodging. I think I hit every nail.

>Also, this one is more minor to me, but you'll notice my hair is lighter at the ends, I'm growing out many years of hair dying, but I wasn't sure of a good way to fix that.. Any tips?
-I would suggest trying the burn tool on midtones and maybe highlights. I thought your hair looked a little thin towards the bottom and the neckline was showing through so I tried to do some fill for that via careful cloning... and covered the tattoo just to see if I could pull that off decently.

I'm not happy with what I ended up with for skin texture in the hi-res version but it doesn't look as bad sized down. I usually don't try for crazier 'over the top' stuff because I usually just don't like those... or maybe it's because I'm not good enough ;)

Well, you did say "feel free to do what you want!" Everyone here is much more capable of retouching your picture than I and they have presented some beautiful examples and tips on how they achieved their results.. I am impressed with the quality of the help here.. But, to be honest the loose hair above and beside the eyebrow gave me a fit and I could not attain an even skin, so out of frustration I moved to another avenue of approach.. Mostly different layers like multiply, screen, normal, dissolve, difference, and even a layer of a colored sketch.. after flattening the image I brought in a layer with the original picture put it on the bottom and erased the lips and eye to let the originals show through.. Used the History brush to lighten the eye using Screen and darkened the lips using Multiply.. Then changed the tilt a lil
Granny

Sorry for bothering, will lurk and practice more

smurph: skin retouch isn't good, eyebrow isn't looking good on the end, the eyelashes look abit fake...


gerry

I had a quick go just wanted to try something did blur overlay a bit of noise thats it
zganie

Thanks, Gerry. Just got Photoshop and saw tutorials. Got a long way to go but wanted to practice any way.

Syd, I love your version. Excellent.

Hi,
I think since this section is all about Retouching then no need to mention what could have been done to take the shot itself.

here is my attempt, i tried to keep it natural looking as i could , tried to keep whatever detail there is in the pic only removed what might be considered flaws.

hey all --

gave it a shot... actually three variations... first one is trying for as natural as i could make it... the hair on the face gave me the most issues... the other two are color variants and contrast variants, for fun mostly...

nothing complicated --
minutiae detail with healing brush
then used marquee tool and used brush on layer by layer (by taste)
that's it...

will remind me to be more wary of the model's hair when i take my next photo, WHEW!!!

thanx for posting the gigantor pic! had much fun --
d

A different slant:

http://edgework.tripod.com/samples/hi-key.jpg

Also had a go. Used blurring and clone tool for the skin blemishes, the nail and some of the hair (pay attention at your next shoot!), brightened eye-white, slightly more saturation on the iris and lips.

Usually I take a screenhot of the 'before' and 'after' images side-by-side to show the differences. But these had to be scaled down to 33% to fit my screen and the differences are too subtle to show up on a scaled down side-by-side. Let alone in a file that's smaller than 100KB!

So you can download the resultant full-size 3.8MB file from IMG_7261 RS01.jpg (http://download.yousendit.com/8FB6DDC24E357B26) .

Have fun!

looks like a battered wife on my monitor, mind you having a few calibation probs here atm

Hi Syd,

I love the skin texture, did you use an existing skin texture at all? I really like what you did with the lighting as well, it's all about the little details.

Anyways, here's my version.



Aurora

1. "Less redness and pitmarks in your face" I used the healing brush here - very soft brush, new layer, constantly sampling and the radius of the brush no bigger than the spot. If you don't like the result go one step backward, resample and try again until it looks natural. I also desaturated the image by about a third.

2. "Make that little fat pudgy mark near my lips at the bottom of my cheek go away" Dodge the shadow away, blend with the healing brush and use the Liquify tool if necessary.

3. "Fix my crazy eyebrows (need a wax.. meep)." I used the Liquify tool to lift up your eyebrow, dodged away the darker hairs and blended with the healing brush.

4. "Fix the hair that is all over the place above/beside my eyebrow" Again, dodge away the darker hairs and clean it up with the Healing Brush, dodge and burn again if necessary.

5. "Remove the little hair sticking out on the black background along my eyes/eyebrow area.
One of my fingernails is chipped, going to fix that too." Both of these are easily fixed with the clone tool. As the background is black and has no pattern you don't have to be particularly careful either.

6. "Also, this one is more minor to me, but you'll notice my hair is lighter at the ends, I'm growing out many years of hair dying, but I wasn't sure of a good way to fix that.. Any tips?" Open a new layer, sample your natural hair color and with a low opacity brush and the layer's blend mode set to color, paint away. Stop when it looks natural.

Sincerely Syd

Hi Syd,

I love the skin texture, did you use an existing skin texture at all? I really like what you did with the lighting as well, it's all about the little details.

Anyways, here's my version.

Thank you G Deezy. That is her original skin texture. That effect comes from dodging and burning. Sometimes, oddly enough, the skin looks 'more real' after dodging and burning than it did before. I like your version too.

Sincerely Syd

Cleaned up the skin with the healing patch. Then softened the skin with the Portraiture plugin. added a low opacity light white under the eyes, and low opacity over the eyes..(5%)..added a hue/sat adjustment to add some skin tone. Lightened the eyes and made the eye reflection smaller...Used the liquify tool to rearrange little things help soften the edges and angles..

Hope you like it.

Lasa

i used recolored to do the hair skin tone fingernails to math lip color and do mosaic...photoshop was only used to add a little cheek color

Well, you did say "feel free to do what you want!" Everyone here is much more capable of retouching your picture than I and they have presented some beautiful examples and tips on how they achieved their results.. I am impressed with the quality of the help here.. But, to be honest the loose hair above and beside the eyebrow gave me a fit and I could not attain an even skin, so out of frustration I moved to another avenue of approach.. Mostly different layers like multiply, screen, normal, dissolve, difference, and even a layer of a colored sketch.. after flattening the image I brought in a layer with the original picture put it on the bottom and erased the lips and eye to let the originals show through.. Used the History brush to lighten the eye using Screen and darkened the lips using Multiply.. Then changed the tilt a lil
Granny

You need to shut your pc down and never touch photoshop again. I am sorry,but you have no sense of what beutiful is. Worst job I ever saw done. Are you blind??

i hope u like ... i late here, im go to the bed. ciao

I know I'm digging this thread up from the dead, but I'm bored and wanted something to work on. Here's my take. Thanks for the photo Aurora.

-------------------------
45227

Hi

lot of stamp work
masked face (mask from channel blue)
lens blurred face protected by mask from blue
desaturated face except around the eye and lips and nails
saturated hair and eye
smudged hair on a new layer op60%
etc...

a picture can' t be finished:heul: even a lady
saby

You need to shut your pc down and never touch photoshop again. I am sorry,but you have no sense of what beutiful is. Worst job I ever saw done. Are you blind??
Oh wow, this is RUDE!!! There's no need to be aggressive like that, really!
Sylvia

i hope you don't mind i posted my edit in a new thread coz i want 2 get crits on it


My Try (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/photo-retouching/19453-my-1st-published-retouch-xd.html#post172130)

Hope you like it and thankx for the photo. do you mind if i use it?

Thanks auroraskye for providing this photo.
Here is my try, I left all the original skin, just dodge & burn and curves. Also liquefy for the nose and chin.

Just one more

Butch

Thanks for the photo!

here is my attempt...what do you thinK?

59323

My turn:

Steps Healing Brush/Clone stamp
Skin Highpass then G-Blur mask skin and set opacity to taste
Hue adj to reds and mask
Lighten eyes
add in gloss to lips
add a slight curve
add a levels adj
add a sepia toned curve 20%
reduce saturation like 30%