Hello friends,

This is my first post here and I m very glad because this place existing, now I will learn more about retouching technique.
My example is here, so ... tell me what do you think :

http://img233.imageshack.us/img233/9561/sonjapreposlesh6.jpg

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Cheers from Belgrade

Nice... Always helps to start with a photo of a beautiful lady.

I think you went a bit too far with eliminating the undereye bags. Skin looks nice, not overly softened (which is all too common.) The overall shift in skin tone from magenta to yellow is an improvement and again not overly done.

Her eyes could stand a bit more color and highlight attention. Her lips are overstated to begin with and might benefit from some de-accenting.

The background is disastrous, completely drawing attention away from her. I'd burn it away or ???. IMO, the lower 25% could be cropped off completely.

Overall, I'm in love, so who cares about some trifling details :)

The background is disastrous, completely drawing attention away from her. I'd burn it away or ???. IMO, the lower 25% could be cropped off completely.

My suggestion instead of burning it away would be to use a lens blur on it, and create a depth of field within the photo. It wouldn't be distracting, and might actually add to the photograph.

I do this with many of my pictures, and generally love the result.

Here's my version - I took the retouched version you did, and layered it on top of the original at 50% opacity to let through some detail under the eye that Lonk was talking about. After that, I slightly brightened up the background, and applied a lens blur to it. Then it was just a matter of masking out the parts I didn't want blurred, and I was done.

http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/124/sonjapreposlesh7jv7.jpg

Very nice job on the retouch (background & eye detail were the only small problems I had with it), and I agree with Lonk - it's much nicer to start out with a good subject!

WayDen loved what you did with the background, very nice improvement.

i think the green eyes are a bit unnatural. i myself would desaturate them a bit to make them look more realistic.

WayDen, how did you manage to blur the background but keep those stray hairs untouched? did you actually mask every hair at a time?

WayDen loved what you did with the background, very nice improvement.

Thanks! I've created depth of field on some of my own pictures (black & white example (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wayden/422250177/) - color example (http://www.flickr.com/photos/wayden/261348963/)), and I really liked the look - so I decided to try and apply it to this picture. It's amazing how much better a simple photo can look with some depth of field added to it!

WayDen, how did you manage to blur the background but keep those stray hairs untouched? did you actually mask every hair at a time?

If I masked every hair, I'd still be doing it right now! I just got lucky with the composition of the photo - if you look at the edges around the hairs (in the original photo), you'll notice there's nothing really sharp in the background. I just blurred the background, and then masked a shape around the girl and stray hairs as close as I could. But I didn't spend a lot of time on it - the whole process that I described in my previous post took about 10 minutes tops...which is much shorter than it used to take me!

I actually started a thread here on RetouchPRO (http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/critiques/15404-easier-quicker-way-do.html) on this method when it was giving me some problems - and of course, I started out with a difficult photo. But if you need some more help/questions answered, maybe you'll find it there like I did.

It's amazing how much better a simple photo can look with some depth of field added to it!

Technically speaking, you are not 'adding' depth of field. You are 'reducing' the depth of field represented in the photo. (But I'm sure that's what you meant :wink: )