Hi there

The portrait of Jamie was done in my studio, but i did do some extensive retouching on this image as his complexion was very bad. I achieved this by some very patient airbrushing zooming in at about 600 %. This way u keep the detail in the skin whilst making it look flawless. Also combined with this technique is using your hue and saturation and curves to smooth out the skin along with gradient maps. I also used this technique on my other 2 images, although not as much, because i wanted to keep some rawness to the black an white image. Any comments would be most grateful. Plus some advice on getting some freelance retouch and photography work would be good.

Cheers

Tube

Hello Tube,

Welcome to RP. I like the B&W image. The contrast between the subject and the background/clothing makes it pop! The other image, IMHO, has a look of plasticicity to the skin. I think it is a little overdone. That's only one opinion. Keep posting. It looks like you have some talent to share.

Ed

Hi ed

Yeah a few people have commented that about the colour image. On the other hand that was the aim of the project, to make him look manniquin like. I was trying to achieve a flawless look on a man rather than a woman to give it a contemporary feel. Its not often u see men with a complexion like that. Also because he is gay, it was intended to make him look more feminine. Thanks for the comments, keep it up

Cheers

Tube

I like the tonality in the skin in the B&W, nicely lit.

To me, the color image looks like an animated character... Pixar-like.

I learned a cool technique to achieve perfect skin a while back on a studio visit in NY. It's only possible if the subject can hold their pose, very still, for 10 to 30 seconds... and that's what you do. You have the subject hold a pose for a long, 10 to 30 second exposure. The idea is that even when they are still, they're moving imperceptably and the long exposure captures that movement as a smoothing effect. It's kind of like the float and move technique described by Katrin Eismann in her book 'Photoshop Restoration and Retouching'.

It doesn't always work. If the subject moves very much you get blurring instead of smoothing. When it does work, it does wonders for skin imperfections. I've experimented with firing a light strobe at the end of the exposure and gotten some good results but it's pretty variable. A good case for digital so you can shoot and check while the model stays put.

Chip