HI, I'm really a newbie to retouching and this is my first official work on retouching. Have been experimenting with Adobe Photoshop CS for a while and would be keen to hear some critiques or examples from the professionals and experts here. Feel free to criticize and comment. Cheers!


Original (http://img13.exs.cx/img13/8981/original7nj.jpg) Retouched (http://img13.exs.cx/img13/9404/retouched6ug.jpg)

Hi didi7, In my opinion you have gone a bit over the top with the blurring.
The skin texture because of this is lacking, and this gives your image a flat artificial look. Also the girls eyes are a bit too violet, and do not look believable because of it.

I have had a very quick play with your image to partly remedy some of this.

First I took a copy of your original untouched image and copied it to a layer above the retouched version. I adjusted its opacity to allow some of the skin texture to show through. I had to mask part of this to allow the new earing to show through (by the way, I thought the original one was the better).

I took the sponge tool set to desaturate, and desaturated the violet in the girls eyes. I also thought her teeth were a bit bright, so darkened them slightly.

With all these types of retouch, it is hard to make a quality assessment when you are on top of the job. Try walking away from the image, and come back to it later, then make your assessment of what you've done.

Thanks for your comment Gary.You did a really quick and good job and I really appreciate that and as a novice, I really got lots to learn. Maybe as a novice, the concept of " the more the better" sticks in which resulted in me overdoing parts of the image. By the way, I would like to learn how to create or rather draw on more eyelashes and apply eye shadows to this pic. Would you show me how? Thanks a million.

Hi didi, this is not really my field of expertise. I think there's info on this sort of thing in another thread. If you search the forums, I'm sure you'll find the info you want. I seem to remember Flora created some good false eyelashes using a custom brush or stamp.

Try looking at this thread.

www.retouchpro.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8903

Thanks Gary for helping me sift out those threads. They were rather useful. Now anymore experts keen to comment on my retouched photos? Please fell free to do so and I really appreciate that. Thanks alot

Gary i love the skin tones you added and also the violet eyes now look better.

Didi yours looked too surealism to be a real girl and boy, the eyes on the girl were like painted on like a dolls, you needed i feel to either blend more or use your opacity or maybe add the layer as a overlay.

I wear lilac color contacts sometimes and they need to blend in the iris more to look a little natural lol!