My first venture into the touch-up world

[JeremiahO]

Well, tonight I started playing for the first time with Photoshop (for retouching).
I took the picture below several days ago (Jenna Jameson for those who are wondering). I really didn't do a whole lot to the image. But I think it looks better. I have tried doing a bit of work on the lips (to bring up some more color) but I haven't been to happy with the results. (did work on the eyes I like, didn't post that edit though)
I tired some of the glam look but not too much as I think way too much of the stuff doesn't look like people anymore. I would love to hear what the pros have to say.
Thanx in advance.

p.s. The files are 2MB a piece if you dl them (they are original size just not original quality, they would be 5MB a piece)

http://photos.imageevent.com/private...7763before.jpg
http://photos.imageevent.com/private...N7763after.jpg

[PatrickB]

Hello Jeremiah,

welcome to the RetouchPro-Forums!

A very lovely picture, do really like it. Maybe you should also try enhancing the eyes a bit, especially the catchlights and the small dark edge around the iris. The skin also still has a lot of blemishes on forehead and cleavage, maybe you can fix them as well.

After all, looks like a very good work to me!

Patrick

[Kraellin]

well, i'm no pro, but the first thing that struck me is, this image needs cropping. how much would be up to you, of course, but with that loose, hanging blouse and the angle of her body and the obvious gorgeous face as the main feature, i would do some.

the next thing that sticks out is the color of her face and the somewhat blurred/softened look. i'm guessing you used a noise filter or a blur. these are great for reducing the texture in a face and giving a more even 'perfection' to the skin, but have the side effect of losing detail overall.

patrick mentioned the small blemishes on her upper chest. any of those can be taken out with a clone type tool.

and you mentioned her lips. frankly, to me, they look fine. but, if you want more color there you could mask them and apply more saturation to that area.

ok, i'm attaching your 'after' and my 'after', but of just her head to save detail from the 100kb limit here on retouch. yours in on the left.

one of the first things i did was to 'sharpen more'. i did this because i was going to later remove some detail with noise reduction and blur also. so i wanted the extra detail there beforehand to compensate.

i used a very little amount of 'texture preserving smooth' to keep from making her face as if she had too much pancake on.

i cloned out some lines and small blemishes and removed some of the shininess with a very light opacity clone also.

i used a low 'clarity' setting to bring out the highlights of her face and add some contrast.

i used the 'Fast Fix' plugin to adjust brightness, saturation, and contrast and adjusted the colors just a tiny bit also. great plugin for quick fixes.

and for the final touch, i used a low setting 'gausian blur' to smooth everything up a bit. i think it was around 0.80

now, there's folks around here that could do this much better than myself, and i'm not trying to hold my version up as THE way to do it; just those are some of the tools you might use.

Craig