Apr 06 Contest Votes

[T Paul]

Voting will run from 23 Apr to 30 Apr 2006. Deadline for votes is 6pm EDT 30 Apr 2006.

Only those that entered the contest may vote. All other votes will be deleted. If you did not enter, but would like to comment on an entry, please post your comments to the Apr 06 Discussion Thread.

Vote for the 5 best entries in order.

Note you cannot vote for your own image. If you do, your votes will be deleted.

Example Vote:
Pick the top five contest entries and list in order...

1. Entry X (First Place)
2. Entry A (Second Place and so on)
3. Entry Q
4. Entry S
5. Entry P

This thread will remain closed until it's time to vote.

And as always, when you vote try to include some things you especially liked about your choices…what made them stand out, what impressed you, etc. This is a learning experience!

[aylaah]

will re-post my votes after others vote - some concern on me swaying the vote process.

[TwinbNJ]

This was the hardest contest to narrow done to ONLY 5!
I looked at overall skintone, colorcast and natural looking retouch.

1 - Artfolio

2 - Soleah

3 - Ferdverfel

4 - Gary Richardson

5 - MinnGal

[HannibalVector]

I don't get it! I thought we were supposed to PM T Paul with our votes.

[Nanls]

Wow.. great entries. What a task. I was following the discussion for the contest, and it seems that making the photo the best it could be would include things like strap and shadow removal so I gave points for the extra effort. Since it wasn't a glamor retouch I discounted images that had any obvious changes to the facial structure or features.

1. likenew - very believable "snapshot" all the way around. Good job on removing the straps and reducing the shadow.

2 - Lorraine - nice job on skin retouch - very pretty image- just enough to look natural. Good job on hair and strap removal.

3. Artfolio - really nice job all the way around; hair, strap, blemish, shadow removal, however, the skin was blotchy.

4. VeryWierd - nice skin, color, very natural, however, strap removal is obvious on the shoulders, and you left the harsh shadow.

5. dkcoats - nice retouching .. just a little outside of a "snapshot"

Too many good entries I could have picked another 5.

~Nancy~

_______________________________________________

www.fixthepixs.com

[T Paul]

Please post the votes in the voting thread...do not PM them to me. That was a typo on my part (copied an old contest and didn't catch that change). So far no one has PMed me.

[Doug Colwell]

1. Soleah
2. Bella
3. Aceman
4. Wendy Bobz
5. Artfolio

Honourable mention to Camile, Lonk, Mendensmall and Infinite Monkey.

[Frank Lopes]

This was very thought to pick...

Sorry, but I couldn't vote for anyone that gave her a new background, new eyes or a new hair style (some were very nice indeed...) because I interpreted the "snapshot look" as enhance what is there, not add to what is there.

Here are my votes:

1 - Nanls - loved it!! Great eyes... but wrong straps :-)
2 - MinnGal - hair a little to neat. Nice face color
3 - Bob Jones - nicely balanced
4 - Verywierd - nice work... slight left shoulder damage
5 - Artfolio - clipped head? what happened :-)

Honorable mentions for their "uniqueness":

InfiniteMonkey - very creative
lonK - love the look: very medieval...
Doug Colwell - loved the picture within a picture within a picture within...
Gmbun - the best hair

[Peth]

1. On Air
2. Nanis
3. Ziaphra
4. Soleah
5. InfiniteMonkey

[palomino]

I had a hard time voting this one....one would have great hair, but bad skin and so on, so I tried to base votes on achieving an overall natural look with skin and hair. Although I liked some of the new backgrounds and interesting manipulations, I tried to vote for people also who stayed with the general concept of the original shot. Thanks again aylaah.
--K

1. Bella- very nice and natural overall, maybe a bit "soft"
2. Ziaphra- I like the pink, it brings out her coloring well and the rest of
the retouch is very smooth also
3. Nanis- very natural and good tones, hair may be a little too neat around
the edges
4. Verywierd- natural and subdued
5. Soleah- Nice job on the overall retouch and the makeup is applied well if
perhaps a bit "pinky" for me

honorable mentions go out to aceman (good brows, but left the straps messy), minngal (very good and would have made top five if you hadn't changed her eye color), likenew (good job on the shadow)

[familytreephoto]

1. Bella
2. KVK
3. BobJones
4. aceman
5. WendyBobz

[soleah]

These 5 entries cleaned up the skin well but kept the skin texture intact, still looked like the model even after the retouch. And they don't look cut and pasted.

1. bella - she looks refreshed.
2. doug colwell - I like her tan coloring (on my monitor)
3. gigadals
4. aceman
5. verywierd

[Caitlin]

I could get it down to a shortlist of about 20 easy - after that it got really tough!

The way I went about judging was first off to reject any where Aylaah's features had been changed significantly. There were quite a few that had narrowed her face or chin, so she didn't look like the same person anymore. Next I looked for clean but natural skin, and subtle makeup. Finally I started rejecting entries based on hair, overall colour, background, clothing etc.

My top 5 were all quite similar, so picking between them was almost impossible!

1. Aceman
2. Bella
3. Palomino
4. Soleah
5. Bob Jones

Honorouble mentions also to: dkcoats, ferdberfel, likenew, doug cowell, onair

I was surprised how many entries left on the white bottom edge!

[Gary Richardson]

Because there were so many entries, this one was hard to judge, and I may not have given every picture the time and attention it needed. My apologies for my inadequacies as a judge.

Sadly a few entries had to be discounted because they were nowhere near the 800x600 size specification (Terivon, Cybercat, Vikibee, Likenew).

What I looked for was a picture that looked as natural as possible. There were many fine entries, but too many were over polished for what I thought the purpose of the challenge was.

The following are my votes

• 1st Gigadals Kept strictly to the brief, and produced a beautifully natural result.
• 2nd Doug Colwell Another natural looking image. Put in second place because of the "extras" added to the image. (loved the effect, but strictly speaking it was outside the brief as I understood it).
• 3rd Bella Another one with a nice light touch, lighting let it down a touch, which is why I put her third.
• 4th WendyBobz Not quite as much a "finished" result as Bella, which is what made her fourth.
• 5th InfiniteMonkey Bit of a wildcard this one. Way off base, but I loved the humour in it, and so had to vote for it.

[OnAir]

My preferred entries are following:

1. Bella
2. Soleah
3.WendyBobz
4. Aceman
5. Verywierd

Can't stand to mention Lonk and Camile unusual interpretations, as I like very much a portrait approach to face retouch.

[HannibalVector]

It's remarkable to see how every contest the opinions about the contest instructions differ.
The goal was to make Aylaah more flattering while keeping the snapshot look.
When you Improve the looks of someone, it is inevitable that the person's appearance is going to change!
If you for example loose a 100 pounds of bodyfatt in one day, your friends wil not recognize you!
I don't want to offend anybody, Aylaah is not really fatt, but I think that the images with narrowed faces looked better. But hey... that's just my humble opinion.

Or did I not understand the rules correctly?

Anyway.... voting was very difficult. The ones that improved her looks, lost the snapshot look.
The ones that kept it as a snapshot, improved her looks hardly. Some of the images look like there was no more than just a 5 minute healing brush job done.
What's the challenge on that?
So I decided to forget the snapshot issue for the most of my votes and to vote for the ones that improved her looks only.

1 kvk (only one who kept it as a snapshot)
2 camile
3 mig_al
4 vikilee
5 laradfreder

[Gigadals]

Too many great entries, too hard to choose...

My first entry was on the March contest, there i changed the color and tinted the ferrarri, when everybody abode by the rules, i broke them. When i entered this contest, i decided to abide them.

We all wanted to go further, we all wanted to change the background, but changing it makes it not the original ain't it? Even the simple removing of the white line alters the original. Nobody would have not noticed that white line, but removing it, that you would have to consider.

So, i voted only on those who did not touch the bg and the white.

1. ferdberfel - niiiiccceee!

2. WendyBobz

3. creeduk - a bit too much

4. Photomegus - the blur was a bit too much

5. InfiniteMonkey - i'll have to give it to you man, your ideas are infinite!

Ciao!

Giga

[Peter S]

Did this the scientific way, Looked at them all and picked the ones I liked best, very hard choice, should be a prize for them all.

1 Doug Colwell
2 terivon
3 Soleah
4 HannibalVector
5 Lorraine

[Ziaphra]

1. Doug
2. Verywierd
3. Bella
4. Nicky666
5. Soleah

[dkcoats]

This wasn't easy. There was the obvious lack of consensus on what 'snapshot' means, among other things.

I really wanted to vote for somebody who solved the problem of the puky yellow background, but either I found them unbelievable (mine, for example) or too clever by half or lacking in some other area. I was also rooting for anybody who tried to solve the clothes (or lack thereof) problem. It seemed to me that the straps (either set or both) alone without the rest of the garment looked like underwear or a negligee or something no matter what you did to 'em and left us with, well, just too much skin. But, again, I thought most of those who tried to solve the problem fell down in some other area.

And I decided the instructions about image size were clear enough that - sorry - I just flat disqualified anybody who didn't at least come close.

So:
1. soleah: good skin retouch, good clothes fix
2. hannibalvector: good skin, liked the vertical crop
3. peth: best, most believable background change, but is the hair too much?
4. verywierd: nice all around but that shoulder glitch bugged me
5. artfolio: could have used more degrunge, I thought, but good otherwise

And thanks again to Aylaah
dc

[cazubi]

So many nice entries. Here are my votes:

1. soleah
2. Verywierd
3. aceman
4. nanis
5. MinnGal

Kudos to InfiniteMonkey on a great manipulation.

Cathy

[PeteyB]

Used T Paul's explanation (post #11 ) of non-glamour retouching as my guide . Here are my votes---

1. grafx

2. WendyBobz

3. Gary Richardson

4. gigadals

5. Soleah

[InfiniteMonkey]

Wonderful to see so many variations on a theme. I can't wait to see what aylaah thinks of it all. I know some people have mentioned how difficult it was to know where to stop, but I still think it was interesting to see people using their imaginations to see how far they could push things and yet still justify their enterpretation of the brief, myself included.

With "The goal is to just make it more flattering while keeping the snapshot look" as my guide, these are my votes, with honourable mentions to follow.

1. Bella - for my money the simplest most effective retouch. No bells and whistles, just nice, understated and empathetic to the subject matter.

2. Gigadels - again, a very fine piece of work. Contrast a little too high for my liking and suffered excessively from jpeg artefacting, which although not a criticism of Gigadels skills, unfortunately did detract fro the image.

3. OnAir - I've noticed several people crying about entrants who have chosen to change the background. Personally I really don't see what the problem is. The brief was to enhance the image and if changing the colour of the background enhances the image, why not? Some took the premise a little too far and comped in other images, which is still ok, as long as the perspective and lighting is consistent, unfortunately few entrants were able to mask the images effectively and the end result just wasn't convincing enough.
Anyway.... I'm going off on a tangent again. Nice retouch Onair, Love the background colour and the overall effect. A little too much noise for my liking, but still very effective.

4. Dcolwell - Nice to see someone else using their initiative to play with the Snapshot theme. Very effective, although it does look like she has mans hands, so I'm not convinced she'll be too happy with this one. Don't think you needed to invert the alternate frames either. Still, nice work on improving her overall complexion.

5. Lonk - Loved the overall effect, only let down by the masking on her hair which looks blurred and unfortunately ruins what would otherwise have been an excellent enterpretation. Be interested to hear what aylaah thinks about the dress!

Honourable mentions go to HannibalVector, with a fantastic, if overenthusiastic effort and RetroRetouch with an interesting and effective slant on the snapshot theme.

Over to you Aylaah...

[MinnGal]

GREAT JOB EVERYONE!!!

I was interesting to see everyones take on it. I can tell I am in the presense of retouching greatness...

1. Soleah - Her over all skin tone is very good. I like the way you gave her a little makeup without going over the top. I find that very hard to accomplish.

2. Aceman - Very nice skintone and overall cleanup. I would have fixed her strap issue however.

3. BobJones - Great skintone and good job on the hair. Noticed an area on her right lower cheek however that looks a little off.

4. NJ_Shadow - I liked that you removed the frizziness of her hair but kept the overall shape, so it still looks thrown back. Skintone looks just the slightest bit on the orangy side.

5. Artfolio - Good job on hair. Skintone seems a little orangy, and I don't think I would have chopped off the top of her head. However I am very drawn to her eyes.

[Retouchpix]

since i am in the middle of shifting house & going on leave, I'll make my post quick and short...
1- bella
2- hannibalvector
3- doug
4- peth
5- aceman

[makeovermagic]

1. HannibalVector
2. KVK
3. WendyBobz
4. gigadals
5. bella

All were great entries!

[Lorraine]

Been back and forth, and over and over, all of the great entries. Finally I chose the ones I thought best kept the original snapshot feeling and had the best skin texture and tones.


1. Bob Jones
2. MinnGal
3. Very Weird
4. Bella
5. Soleah

Lorraine

[jaysmummy]

1 - infinitemonkey
2 - hitmaniac
3 - aceman
4 - palomino
5 - sean2

[creeduk]

This was hard I almost entertained the idea of skipping voting but taht would not be fair. In the end I tried to choose the more natural ones but I slipped in a cpl of exceptions I had also thinned the face so let that slide a little as long as it kept close to the original.

1. bella - light touch accurate work that's what topped it.
2. Veryweird - nearly put first love the work , eyes and skin great straps not as clean.
3. kvk - love it I think you may have inspired hannibal be nice if you left more of the hair
4. BobJones - Loved it clear sharp, took a little too much hair away.
5. HannibalVector - very captivating draws me to look like the hair is left could be less highlights


Had to mention: cybercat, nice natural bright, I did a similar move I guess we went too bright.
maddymaba, good job, natural, got rid of highlights, kept the straps and background which I actually prefer more realistic but the overall image needed to have more snap probably benefit from scaling down a bit.
gigadals - very natural again light touches but I felt some of the highlights could be done and a little sharpen. I agree looking at mine now it is a little overdone.

[phillip6653]

1. Doug Colwell
2. Palomino
3. Artfolie
4. Minngal
5. Nanls