here's my try on a picture of my girlfriend... before and after.... any comments?

Wow, I love what you did here! How did you get these nice brown tones? Very subtle and natural retouch, I really like it.

Yes very nice indeed.
I took it a little further, something I often do in portraits. Hope you don't mind. She would probably not notice without the comparison picture, probably just think it's a good picture.

This is something I've been wanting to learning about. Since there is no book on retouching ethics how do we really know when is it OK and not OK to do this. Love to hear several opinions.

My photo release forms give me full and permanent rights to everything I shoot. That aside, only one time have I had a model complain about an edit. Makes sence as we always strive to make the model look thier best (or even better).

How about portraits, headshots, wedding victims uh I mean couples?

hahah.. thank you crazy fly... i knew i left that one out when i was done retouching.. wanna get back into the nose job.. but.. cant wait for the critiques.. heehhee...

I think that as long as it matches for the picture purposes (goals) and the retouch does not eliminate any trademarks of the model such as moles probably... or if people would see it at the first time, they would still know that model in the picture is the same model... because sometimes there are retouches that change the whole presentation of the model... IMO

thanks for the comment...