Hello!

I have been lurking on this forum for a long time. I really appreciate all the tips that you gave, and I have learned a lot from you all.
Yesterday was the first time, that I tried using dodge and burn technique with soft light blending mode.
I dont know, if I understood it correctly...I first zoomed in pretty close, about 400% and lightened the black spots and darkened the light spots. That was for the pores. I used a 5px brush with opacity around 20%. This took A LOT of time, I would say I used about a half an our on one eyelid, but the eyelids were pretty messy. Is it normal, to use so much time?
Well, than I zoomed out a little bit, around 100% and I was looking for bigger light blemishes or darker spots on the skin. I noticed, that I desaturated the skin on the parts, where I lightened it...is there a way that I can avoid this?

Here is the example of what I did. Its not even 50% finished, but I just wanted to get your opinion on this. Am I going into the right direction? How should I shade her face, to get more "edgy" or "fashin" look? Also, what is the best way, to change the skin tones?

I used to use the degrunge technique, that I learned from godmothers vid tutorial, but it seems to me, that I get pretty flat look. The third photo is the example for this.

Thanks a lot for your help, I am looking forward to your comments and tips.

P.S.: This is a photo of my girlfriend that I took a few weeks ago...

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w16/sodjdobe/other/IMG_9976potn.jpg

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w16/sodjdobe/other/IMG_0006orig.jpg

http://i172.photobucket.com/albums/w16/sodjdobe/other/IMG_0006retouched.jpg

Beautiful pictures. While I am not a professional retoucher they look really nice. The only thing that stood out to me was on the last picture. It is where the neck blends into the body. It appears that the area is really red in the neck area and does not seem to blend with the chest area below. However, this may have been what you wanted.

dc

This is my way of doing it.

First off, those are some GREAT pictures!
I'm no professional, but here's my take on it. I hope you like it.
On that light background colors can really pop. I thought you did excellent work on both the photo and the touch up. I was kind of at a loss of what to do with the hand.

edit:
Guess I really didn't answer any questions.
What program are you using?
I used an exposure layer to brighten the image and deepen the color. Used a Levels layer to fine tune the color. Cut out the background to bleed it all together nicely. Of course pumped up the saturation on the eyes and changed the hue slightly. Removed the piercings on the ear.
You could probably do without cutting the background out, exposure takes care of it. I did it anyway. I don't recall messing with Curves.
I think that's about it.

I gave the other one a shot.
Not too sure what my kick is on the wash out. :)

Hopefully these look good, I know my other computer monitor makes my stuff look totally out of whack.

I went ahead and played with the picture to see what I could come up with that is edgy and cool like that.

click here to view (http://www.echophotoworks.com/fashiongirl.jpg)

One of the main things I noticed was that you left no head room and lots of torso, which really wasn't adding anything to the picture. So I moved it down a little bit to help rebalance the picture out.

Most of what I did was layer blending, a little bit of curves, and a lot of messing with the darks and the lights.

I created a few curves adjustment layers and painted in contrast in a few areas.

I think the retouch is really clean, but there is a lack of dark tones that can give off a "flat" feeling. If you add a little more saturation, that might take care of the problem.

58325

On the first picture, the skin texture caught my eye immediately. You can see the pores on the cheeks (which looks fine), but then the nose is completely smooth, making it look artificial or somehow painted in. I selected the smooth area, copied it to a new layer, and used the Add Noise filter to gave it about 1.8–2.0% Uniform noise level. It made the skin on the nose look a bit more realistic.

Just added some shadows.

Well at least give her a manicure on more than one fingure!
:wink:
~Nancy

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