Just wanted to share an example on some fashion retouching from one of my commercial shoots.

As always, if you are careful and determined about what picture you want to achieve, it's always a lot easier to then start the finishing work with retouching.

Any comments are welcome!

Regards,
Mikael Johansson, missionimages
www.missionimages.se

You're lucky, Mikael! I wish the fashion shots I work on were that good to start with!

Agreed. Very good photo and nice retouch. I like the shimmering skin : )

What is the skin color mix! I really like the skin color and texture how was it created?

phaqu: this guy is only about the show and not the tell! never give away your workflow...maybe some cmyk work as well :P

Gerry

Are you serious? Do people really use CMYK in their retouching workflow? It's the most ruthlessly destructive colour space - I avoid it like the plague until the very end (working for magazines, so everything ends up CMYK eventually).

Great job! I would only make her shoulder bit slimmer, but it's very subjective :)

Are you serious? Do people really use CMYK in their retouching workflow? It's the most ruthlessly destructive colour space - I avoid it like the plague until the very end (working for magazines, so everything ends up CMYK eventually).

when i was at a shop that specialized in Hi-Color, we specifically told all our customers to send us RGB files as it would result in a better conversion and they still sent us CMYK images...

Yes, that's my experience too, though it's gradually getting better.

In the "old days", high end scanners scanned straight to CMYK. Of course this is now redundant, but the old habits still linger in the industry.

I have done skin in CMYK at the beginning, and used to prefer it - curves on CMY channels in CMYK are smooth and subtle, very nice to work like that. Also how you use the black generally gives an enormous amount of power, directly controlling that plate, very difficult to reproduce in RGB without profile stuff. Don't write CMYK off, everyone works in RGB now, but its still got its lessons.

Very nice! Love it. Brilliant model and makeup also.

How did you originally light the photo and sharpen?
My guess is one large softbox top and [our] right and a low diffused source for the background?
Unsaturated soft light layer?

your picture is so damn small. cant hardly see any thing here. You should attach a high res pic.

Err.. do I need glasses - or can any of you se what's going on!!??! And i'm at a 120" monitor here. HI-RES!!?