hi, i have just joined here and i must say this is an awesome site with loads of knowledge, i would like to say hello to everyone here :) , i've been doing glamour photography for about 4 months now and i have someone teaching me the tricks of the trade so to speak, i'm now trying to get good at photoshop, i've been using it for about 3 months but not very much, just for little things like cropping and levels, this picture is from a set i took the other day and i would love some opinions on the retouch i did as i don't think i'm very good, also if anyone wants the high res version to have a go themselves then let me know and i'd be happy to send it u, help is much appreciated, thanx!!

Chris

Be careful with the amount of blur u put into the picture. The skin is too smoothed out , so u need to preserve the skin texture to make a good retouch. U could work more on light and shadow , to add more shine on the skin. I would also work on that strong shadow on the left leg, because it makes it look cut. Pay attention to the bg too. U could add a little vignette and some retouch to the sofa. :)

There's a significant colour shift between the two pictures, was this intentional.

Lighting of the whole scene could have been better.

As already said, the skin looks artificial and overdone.

it wasn't intentional, when i took the photo i had the white balance on auto but i thought it was too cold looking so i corrected it in camera RAW, i see what you mean about the skin, thanx for the comments by the way, i'll try working on them :)

As far as the lighting it comes across a bit dim. Need to toss her into the curves adjustment for a spin.

Well, she is a very sexy model, so that makes it worth retouching, haha. Anyway, Oh-Heck was right about punching up the curve to get some more light on the subject. Another distracting for me to take focus off of is the dark shadow coming off the leg through the couch and floor. I would try to subtle that out a bit to make it less obvious. My eye went straight there, but I want my eye to go right to the model. There is a large round line in the breast/bra area that I would tone down and the line in the arm area, i would try and soften a bit. The pose is interesting, but did you crop? I really miss seeing at least one of her feet/shoe area, but that's just IMHO.

Your org image might have needed exposure comp at least 1/2 to 1 stop, over, maybe pump up the strobe a bit.

Someone commented about skin smoothing and too much blur, yes be careful about that and try to get some pores like real skin, D&B, grundge, etc. you are on your way though, it just takes work like we all go through and it's always fun shooting an attractive subject

steve

Nice photo, i would like to have a go at retouching your image if you are still happy to froward the original file please send it to
Jdic3327(at)bigpond.net.au

and i will send it back once completed.

please change the (at) to @ in the above email address

Smokie

If you send me a copy of the high res i'll take a stab at it, if you have the raw file that would be better since its under exposed.
adambrodzinski@mac.com

thanx for the comments, much appreciated!!
I just got Katrin's book so i will be reading that over the next few weeks and hopefully be improving all the time. :)

Here's a quickie. Only did color adjustment and lighting changes. E-mail me the high resolution or RAW and I will spend more time. It has potential.

duwayne@oosterbaan.us

Chris, as you have a few who'd like you to email the pic including myself, maybe you could put it up on a web site for downloading and post a link to it.

With regard to your retouch, it does look overly smooth, but at such small resolution it is hard to tell. It definitely needs a curves adjustment to fix the lighting issue, but what I am saying is nothing that anyone has not said previously.

any good sites out there i could upload the RAW file to?
thanx!

I really like Divshare.com

yer good site that one thanx!

i have uploaded the RAW file here:
http://www.divshare.com/download/1952276-00b

yer good site that one thanx!

i have uploaded the RAW file here:
http://www.divshare.com/download/1952276-00b
Could anyone link to this? Kept timing out without actually hooking up to any file to download.

Could anyone link to this? Kept timing out without actually hooking up to any file to download.


Yes, I did yesterday and downloaded a file which turns out to be a *.php file. It's more than 8meg but nothing I have will open it.

Syd

Could anyone link to this? Kept timing out without actually hooking up to any file to download.

I got a Nikon raw file. The link works just fine with FireFox on both PC and Mac.

it should be a nikon RAW file, if anyone wants it but can't download it let me know your email and i will send it to you, thanx:)