Critiques - - Here is a photo I touched up.

kneff · #1 09-09-2005, 11:47 PM

Please let me know what you think. This is also a pageant photo. I'm still learning. The eyelashes are horrible, I know. Thats one of the main and most important things I need to learn. Anyone to help? Please be honest what you think about the new photo.
Thank you

maureeno · #2 09-10-2005, 01:47 AM

Maybe it's my eyes, but I think the eyelashes look fine. It's a beautiful re-rouch, in my view.

Maureen

Gary Richardson · #3 09-10-2005, 02:49 AM

Hi kneff,

I'm not too knowledgable on what is required of a pageant picture (we don't have them over here thank god) but the following are a criticism of your posted picture.

The first thing that really hits you is the poor extraction. The edges are harsh and angular, and the hair is particularly noticeable. You would have been better just cropping close and keeping the original background. If the chair back showed it could be cloned out.

The eye whites are a little too white, and could do with toning down a little.
In taking out the catchlight in her right eye (as we look at it) you have managed to mis-shape the iris, which really drew my attention.

Lastly, you have lost a lot of the skin texture with over blurring, most noticeable above her left eye (as we look at it). Not sure what the norm is for skin texture in pageant photos, so this may be within acceptable limits.

Hope this helps a little, we do have some members that do a lot of this kind of work, and can probably give a more knowledgeable critique.

Gary

Flora · #4 09-10-2005, 04:33 AM

Hi kneff,

Welcome to RP!

I love the way you cropped and positioned the image .... for the rest I have to agree with Gary ....

Grafx is one of our members who deals in pageant retouching professionally and in this post she gives a few basic guidelines for this kind of retouching...

P.S. I'm moving your Thread to the Critiques Forum as I think it'll get more attention there....

Cassidy · #5 09-10-2005, 07:32 AM

As published by another, quite a good tutorial can be found here for retouching http://www.software-cinema.com/htw/jhd_02.html and a quick search for mask fine hair in photoshop will reveal many methods for masking hair.

I thought I'd have a go at this as on my screen the photo also looks rather cyan dominant.

kneff · #6 09-10-2005, 12:54 PM

Hi Cassie

What did you do to the photo? Was this with a blending method or how did you get the softness around the hair?

Cassidy · #7 09-10-2005, 09:16 PM

Others are far more expert than I with hair masks however this link is a good starting point
http://www.adobeevangelists.com/pdfs...nnel_masks.pdf
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/pho...bps_5agirl.htm
and
http://www.photoshopforphotographers...d/movie-04.pdf

kneff · #8 09-10-2005, 11:47 PM

I read these two tuts, and most of them were just to difficult to understand still. I went and bought two books on Photoshop CS2 and have been trying to learn some things. Everything just seems so darn complicated. I've always used Photoimpact 10 and its easier, but I think Adobe has alot more to offer. I still go to Photoimpact to redo the background though because I just don't get it on here yet. Geez...never realized there could be so much in one program. Anyway, thank you for the tuts and I bookmarked them.
Kelley

Cassidy · #9 09-10-2005, 11:56 PM

Kelley I did amend my post, have a look at the second one, it is different to the extent that it shows you how to selectively enhance just certain portions of a mask