This is a very impromptu casual portrait of an Indian bride. Except for the tiniest bit of sharpening, this is completely untouched. Her skin looks plastic as the result of some very heavy makeup for the ceremony.

It looks oversharpened and plastic in the nef.

Any suggestions on how to improve this would be welcome. I am willing to texturize, add grain, damn near anything to make this better.

BTW, altho I did convert profile in Photoshop, it does look slightly more orange in browser than Photoshop.

Hello Traveler

I'm not certain this needs anything. When I look at this, I see a wedding photo... which is exactly what it is. Most brides on their wedding day cake on the makeup more so then any other day, but that's part of the day! I wouldn't say it looks like plastic at all, in fact I can see some very subtle variations in her skin tone which look very nice actually. The only thing I would probably do to adjust the photograph, is to remove the head in the upper left corner, and crop the photo slightly.

I agree with Nicholas that the photo looks natural and not plastic. There is an appropriate level of tone variation, at least in the image you attached. However, if you want to add roughen it up a bit, try the following.
Above the background layer add a channel mixer adjustment layer. Check the Monochrome box and adjust the sliders to favor the blue channel. I used -30 Red; +20 Green; +120 Blue. Now change the Blend Mode of the adjustment layer to Luminosity and reduce the opacity of that layer until the image suites your taste. You may also find that other blend modes like Overlay and Hard Light with reduced opacity will also get the effect you seek.
Regards, Murray

Your Indian bride was probably chasing a flawless skin. I used a soft focus set (screen/multiply) and then using a blank layer in overlay mode, added a bit more shine to her face. This is really rough however, as using a notebook for retouching is not a satisfying experience by any means

Thank you all for your comments.
I had planned to remove the head of course.
I understood Murray's suggestions and will try them later.

I didn't, however, understand this from Cass.
I used a soft focus set (screen/multiply) and then using a blank layer in overlay mode, added a bit more shine to her face.

How does a blank layer affect the image?
Is Katrin Eissman's book on retouching a good primer for me?

Thanks again for the help.

Lew

Katrinia Eissman's books are excellent.

A soft focus set consists of copying the image and then gaussian blurring it so it is fairly blurry and setting the blending mode to screen, you then duplicate that layer and set the blending mode to multiply and dropping the opacity to around 50%. Now if you put both of those layers in to a group, you can add a hide all mask. Drop the opacity of the group to around 50% and then soften the details by painting the hideall mask with white.

A new blank layer, set to overlay and painted with a very low opacity white brush will add highlighting which you can build upon. If you are not happy with it then you can simply scrap it and start again or play with the opacity to make it tone better.

As most posts above I think her skin is just fine. I applied the blue channel to a duplicate to increase density. Then applied some texture.

Butch

her some retouching