Hi.
Let me know what You think Guys.

Original:

www.giarnella.com/original.jpg

After:
#1
www.giarnella.com/first.jpg

#2
www.giarnella.com/second.jpg

#3
www.giarnella.com/third.jpg

Thnx
sn4il

Welcome to RetouchPRO

I am not sure by what you mean by "uplifting"

What I see is you have three different versions of an original that have very distracting high pass or some kind of halos

It would be nice if you post a less than 100K picture here so we could click a thumbnail preview and wouldn't have to go off site to evaluate your retouch work. That would also insure that in 5 years from now your work would be still viewable even though the link to it off site may have disappeared.

I'm not sure what you were trying to achieve, but to me they all look very blotchy.

Are you doing a retouch or a painting? Wasn't sure which way you were going on it. Pretty lady.

She really is, introduce her to me sometime!

Actually she is too pretty to be retouched as if Paris Hiltons makeup-bag exploded in her face.

Turned the catchlights btw.

Or did you go for the paint-style?

Photoshop: Actually the catchlights need a lot more work, I just put an airbrush dot inside as I didn't have the time. But the catchlights will make the difference!

Hi :)
I don't know what I was trying to achieve. I don't have any experience with Photoshop and was just plying with this shot. I guess I just went to far with it :)
She is my good friend and I have tons of her photos. The bad thing about them is that all were taken at bad location, with weird objects in the background plus I was all exited about my first camera ever.
I just started to learn a bit of Photoshop and maybe one day I will be able to fix them up a bit.
Few more samples here:
http://www.giarnella.com/a1.jpg
http://www.giarnella.com/a7.jpg
http://www.giarnella.com/a9.jpg
http://www.giarnella.com/a14.jpg

Any suggestions on fixing them up?

Thnx
sn4il

It would be nice if you post a less than 100K picture here so we could click a thumbnail preview and wouldn't have to go off site to evaluate your retouch work.

I agree with Granny..
I would rather see a thumbnail before I click off site..

One suggestion would be , if she is the focus of the photos, get rid of the distracting stuff by cropping then do some slight repairs...

Hi :)
I don't know what I was trying to achieve. I don't have any experience with Photoshop and was just plying with this shot. I guess I just went to far with it :)
She is my good friend and I have tons of her photos. The bad thing about them is that all were taken at bad location, with weird objects in the background plus I was all exited about my first camera ever.
I just started to learn a bit of Photoshop and maybe one day I will be able to fix them up a bit.
Few more samples here:
http://www.giarnella.com/a1.jpg
http://www.giarnella.com/a7.jpg
http://www.giarnella.com/a9.jpg
http://www.giarnella.com/a14.jpg

Any suggestions on fixing them up?

Thnx
sn4il

First off - you have some very nice shots of a very lovely girl! They just need a little boost. All I did was 2 curves adjustment layer with each masked. One curve was to increase contrast on her and one was to darken the background a bit. I did just a very small amount of dodging & burning. Too small to do too much.

IMO I don't see all that you're talking about with the bad location, weird objects, etc. These 4 were all shot from f2.8 - f4 and that will blur the background. The 20D is a nice camera! I think you're being a bit hard on yourself as these are nice shots.

As far as Photoshop skills - they take time. There are a lot of good tutorials around and a lot of help here. Practice, practice, practice. One thing tho is you need to know what you want to achieve before you start (unless you're just playing around and that can lead to some interesting results).