Here are a couple I did yesterday. 1st one was a 21 year old so not much major work needed here. Had to take off the shadow on the lip piercing, smooth out the skin a little, bump up the eyes and give a little depth to the hair.

http://litfuel.net/pics/before_after9.jpg


This one I tried to even things out a little without taking away the complete age of the subject. Obviously totally smooth skin would have looked odd so I did the steps above but dialed down the skin smoothing a little more.


http://litfuel.net/pics/before_after11.jpg


Any thoughts? thanks

I know that you have reduced wrinkles and that's fine, but the over all "look" she has is harsh. Just removing the vertical wrinkles in her forhead gives her a less "intense" facial expression.

JMHO.

Good example of needing to concentrate on improving the photography in the image as well refining the look of the subject. You are not alone here in missing that aspect of the retouch. Why it's important to know what a good photo looks like instead of just taking out wrinkles in someones face. A photography background helps loads.

Hi MrBeagle,

I tend to agree with Ant here. Improving the photograph will give you a better base to work from. Here is a quick go I had.

Hi,

You got better skin but the main problem with the original about the lightning, and flashing directly in her face efected the burn outs and unwanted shades on her face (IMHO)

saby

Hi,

You got better skin but the main problem with the original about the lightning, and flashing directly in her face efected the burn outs and unwanted shades on her face (IMHO)

saby

Hi Saby,

That is sorted relatively easily with the healing brush tool.

Alison, that looks like a great edit!

Hi I did a quick fix an this lady, I hope she feels years younger.
cathy

I think you've done well with the choices you've made in smoothing out the skin and getting rid of the piercing shadow. The piercing still looks odd as it's not very shiny.

I'm learning a lot also, and have just been shooting portraits for 5 days straight so feel free to throw away my opinions!

I would probably have chosen a pic where the model had lowered her head slightly and very faced the camera a little more to show her left cheek and 'shorten' her nose.

The hair could do with a little 'deepening' simply with a d&b layer as it's quite flat right now.

MY MISTAKE is that i tend to shoot way too dark and end up adding highlights, this is from my days in film. Digital is generally very flat looking so I angle lights a little more than I wold for film.

Again, feel free to throw away my comments like a used tissue.

[QUOTE=mrbeagle;163822]Here are a couple I did yesterday. 1st one was a 21 year old so not much major work needed here. Had to take off the shadow on the lip piercing, smooth out the skin a little, bump up the eyes and give a little depth to the hair.

http://litfuel.net/pics/before_after9.jpg

Here is another retouch version. When I preview...I'm not seeing what I just retouched so I don't know if this is going to post or not.

CathyH,

I think you made a radical change in the skull's anatomy. It seems that you had simulated pumping some Botox injection here and there. I think that the most important mistake was in eyebrows positioning. You also made a mistake in blurring the sparkle of eyes. If you notice she was happier before. She had a wholeheartedly smile. After, she is much pretending a smile with some buried grief inside. I must say that teeth are not perfected. They seem to wear ceramic coating which is a dazzling white that can't fit with the age appearing in "After". You did good with the nose, though it appears slimmer. But was the greatest thing that you did with this lady with the wholeheartedly smile!

Mohamed Al-Dabbagh
Senior Graphic Designer

Reduced the wrinkles just a bit, but not completely. Used a combination of highpass, gausian blur and masking.

Oh...gave you some eyelashes too..