Hey, Chris here!

Just wondering what you made of my retouch of Elisha Cuthbert. It might take a while to load if you have 56k.

Before
http://img33.exs.cx/img33/4337/04ecuthbert.jpg

After
http://img88.exs.cx/img88/3829/after1.jpg

I don't have much time to talk about it just now, going to a fair :D But it took about half an hour to get that far. Of course nto much needed doing in the first place :wink:

Looks, great! just a couple of observations.

I believe in glamour retouch, fly away hair is to be removed. Around her head, and the few single strays over her right eye. Also, the smaller clump of hair that runs left to right, almost, on her forehead.

If you made the dimensions of the image about 8x10, you could see the whole thing at once, instead of scrolling thru it.

Very good skin smoothing. How?

kiska

very nice attempt.

but i think you have altered the natural skin texture too much, removing and cleaning up various buttons and scratches is wahts needed, but te natural skin texture must be preserved.

here is an amazing example of a beauty/fashio portraiture retouching:

(i wish i was there on my PS skills! doh..)

http://www.rayfresh.com/retouche/

Hey Chris,
I couldn’t help myself, such a great shot to start with so I had to play.
This is what I did.
Eyes: From a tut by a PS guru name Tony DiFranco.
Used the dodge tool at about 12% and a scrubbing motion on the highlights and some on the iris itself. Then lassoed both the irises and made a new layer (cntrl-j) and unsharp masked them with these setting Amount 147, Radius 0.3, Threshold 0.0 (I did this twice on this shot but sometimes once is enough.)
Then raised the contrast to +21
Then flattened image.
The softening was done with an action I wrote that simulates the Carl Ziess “softar” filter.
Hope I did it justice.
Els

Nice work Chris, and elsdon too. I had a go at it as well, but went for the sharper "Cover Girl" look. I followed these basic steps:

1: Copied the left side of her forehead to the right to cover that weird hair thing going on there
2: Clone brush blemishes (but not natural marks like freckles and leaving some imperfections here and there)
3: Merged in and duplicated the layer
4: Ran median and gaussian blur on the new layer
5: Created a layer mask, filled with black, and painted white over the skin areas to show the new layer over the existing skin.
6: Reduced the opacity to allow some of the original texture to show through (thereby softening imperfections, while leaving them there to help prevent that plastic look.)
7: Sharpen the background layer until the eyes look nice and sharp, set as history source and back up a step.
8: Sharpen background layer to bring out detail in the hair and clothing.
9: Using the history brush, paint over the eyes to sharpen them and draw them out
10: Color Correct with a Selective Colors Layer.
11: Added a little grain to the whole image to help blend the elements and reduce whatever degree of "plastic" has crept into her skin.

and there you go.

The hardest part is cleaning up and softening the skin without destroying the texture and distinguishing characteristics of it (like the little freckles on her nose). Sometimes I need to add a color blended layer of a skintone that matches at about 40% to smooth out the color especially if there is a lot of texture in the underlying layer of skin (such as acne scaring).

Take care,

Michael

I hope you dont mind, but i took the liberty of having a go at some Ethereal effects.

I would love to explain the process, but there is simply too much involved, but basically

Smoothing of the skin using the Median overlay method
Manual smoothing
Hair removal and cleanup
Eye and lip enhancement
Eyebrow sculpting and recolouring
Light Casting on high areas ( cheeks, arms and hair )
Background remodeling

Image can be found here:

Ethereal Glamour (http://www.pbase.com/axleuk/image/38424735)

Not particularly well executed..just an idea..cause the pose is so HOT!!!

Dave

Nice job! Natural retouching can be hard sometimes to achieve with such a large photos because of all the details. I've compared your work to others here and think that you've done it very well. I took a look at rayfresh.com and got really amazed. How does he keep that skin texture?

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.asp?p=101733&seqNum=3

http://kentdesign1.com/images/glamour.jpg

Couldn't add anything to what was suggested above but I liked the picture so much I turned it into an Illustration by overprocessing...denoise, unsharp mask, Paint With Light action.

EDIT: Added a Black/White Gradient Map adjustment layer. Makes nice b&w's.

I like that effect there. Can I ask - What is Paint With Light?

Dawn

I've been looking for it for many years [10 :bawling: ] Can you explain the procedure CSPRINGER? :nod:

Paint With Light

http://www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=9421

here are are some links to the process with more examples.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1006&message=12199907

Here's my attempt at a B&W rendition

Click

My reply, its a Beauty make over i give her a more female jaw, a smaller nose, bigger eyes, longer eye lashes, fuller lips, make her lips more symmetrical, perfect skin (so far is possible) and some other little things..

lets me know what you think! thanks

Ruud

Click Here For a Much better resolution! (http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/7301/04ecuthbertcopy2bm8.jpg)

heres mine. Changed the background, did some PWL and some lip gloss and color to the eyes.

My attempt. To my eyes, the eyes in the original look a little dead given they are so so dark.

pellepiano
Sorry to drag up an old thread, but I love your work here.

What's PWL ?

I think it means Paint With Light (PWL)?