What did i do wrong?
Please critiques...

Photographer: Much Firmansyah
thank you...

Well - to be honest this is one of those examples where the original is better in my opinion. The colortones are more pleasing for that sort of photo in the original (I don't see this as leaning toward a fashionphoto that could benefit from a pale skintone). On my monitor (which is calibrated) I find the midtones and shadows a bit too dark (the bottom part of her hair and eyes in particular). You should remove the stray hair on the left side - and it looks a bit oversharpened?

It's close to impossible to do anything decent with a screenshot and from that size image but here's a quick take on what I mean...

For color you took out to much yellow from the figure. It was the right way to go but you probably should have added in some cyan and magenta to change it up. With a touch of Black in the 3/4 tones to the shadows. And hold the yellow move in the neck shadows by her collar bone under her chin. It needs the yellow otherwise it'll get the hot spot that you have now.

Between opening up for contrast and subtracting the yellow, it got way too much of a contrast move. In this case instead of opening up the 1/4 tones so much try a smaller move there and bump up the 3/4's a small amount. When moving the 3/4's to add the depth to the figure keep in mind that when you add the cyan and magenta to the figure it will combine with the 3/4 tone move.

I can't really comment on the skin retouching if anything was done. The image is to small to tell.

The hair looked fairly decent in the before shot. I can see why you filled in the area you did, but it now looks like she has really bad tails coming out of her hair. You need to watch out for repetition. And inside it goes from dark to light to dark etc. The hair would have a little more evenness to it from the lighting that is there.

Chris

Hi Bandenk,

If you are not familiar with my critiques I apologize in advance as they can tend to be a little verbose. Please take them as nothing but suggestions and ideas based on my experiences. Take the good and leave the bad.

First let me say that overall the composition is nice but I may suggest that she is a little more bladed to the camera than she should be and it would be nice to have just a hint of her far shoulder to give her a little more shape. Secondly, this can be fixed in Photoshop or during the shoot but I have learned to be careful with the female underarm. Its wrinkles can become a bit awkward in appearance and sometimes can take on, let's just say an unappealing look. Photoshop is a great tool to fix that area, just toning it down with some blur and a little low opacity strokes of a soft paintbrush after sampling your color from that area.

It appears to me that your exposure is a bit under which has caused that shift in tonality that others mentioned. The underexposure has also caused a lack of D-max (a true black) which is what I would have corrected first and foremost and that almost completely removed the color casts. I also removed a bit of yellow from her skin. I would guess that you have a fan blowing in the shot and although PS lets us fix those unkempt hairs, for me that is the hardest thing to fix in the computer and I'd rather do more work during the shoot to make sure the hair is as tidy as possible. A traditional aerosol hair spray is not used as much today by stylists but I suggest carrying a can for yourself. A light spray every few minutes when shooting with a fan will tack those single hairs that are blowing around down to the larger strands. Other than that it's all good. I did a very, VERY fast work up of your original using a technique I have developed that simulates the look of the old Hasselblad soft focus filters. It's hard to find them these days and for those of us who started our careers on film, they produced the most beautiful soft focus ever. Using the effect also helps get rid of some of the unkempt hair. Here is a quick run down on producing the effect for anyone interested. I hope this helps and feel free to ask me anything you may have questions about.

c

1 - Duplicate the original layer
2 - Blend mode = darken - opacity = 30% then add a guassian blur equal to about the file size of your image.
3 - Duplicate the blurred layer - blend mode = lighten opacity = 70%.
4 - Merge those two layers together and you will see a nice soft focus effect.
5 - Now you can adjust the opacity of that layer, I usually end up about 85%ish,
6 - Use your eraser, (soft brush, about 85%) to hit around the lips and eyes and other key elements that you want to be less soft, like I did the earrings on your girl. Play with the opacity levels and erasing techniques and you will get a nice feel for how you like to end up. When you are done flatten your image.


Hope this was not confusing.

Sweetlight, I really like your critics (haven't seen many of them though). Respect, they are so very polite and still down to the point and always provide a profond solution track. Very sympathic :-)

Amica

@ Bandenk, I am a too much of a beginner to tell what's not so right with your retouch, but it looks a little bit too harsh to me :-)

Thank you so much Amica. I came from a Maters Program where some of the pompous instructors took what seemed to be great joy in pounding people during critiques, especially those that clearly would not survive in the art market and it always seemed like the bully picking on the weak kid in school. I always stuck up for those kids. Don't get me wrong, a good strong critique is needed lots of times but you can tell someone the negative things without wiping out their pride and desire to learn at the same time.

You also reminded me of something I forgot to say in my first entry although someone else had said it. This photo is clearly a case where the original stood much stronger than the worked final. Her skin went a bit too much alabaster (ish) in the final. Once again though we all need to remember that some lattitude has to be given to deal with the differences in monitors and such.

c

Since you were trying to soften this photo, you did achieve that and it looks nice. But the one thing that I see that got softened too much were her eyes. They were bright and colorful...now they look dull.