Critique of a retouched redhead.

[ScottBragg]

Looking for comments on the final product here. I've attached both the original image and the final retouch.

Retouching done in Photoshop.

Thanks for your feedback..

[Photo678]

Looks pretty good.

My only issue is around the eyes....she kind of look likes she has black eyes....with the effect of high key lighting that you gave, those shadows should be a little duller, and a little softer.

Other than that...tight work.

[Panpan]

I went with a softer light effect.

Pierre

[Panpan]

This is a high key treatment, Closer poster style. I also made a few more corrections.

Pierre

[Duv]

Welcome aboard ScottBragg!! I was experimenting to see if I could get your high key effect and had to give up. Here's one the I angled a bit and cropped tightly.

Cheers

Dave

[mcacioppo]

a couple things jump out at me that i would just have removed / subdued by habbit:

spot on left cheek (our left, not hers)
lines on neck
dark shadow/bump on forehead
and also i might have opened up the right eye a little (our right)

other than that, the light looks a lot better than the original photo

[Cassidy]

Looking at the before and after, the after shot whilst it looks soft, to my eye looks too soft to the point of blurry, unless this lack of distinction is what you are after.

I found that by cleaning up the green channel you actually removed most of the flaws such as dark spots and ruddiness.

I played around with the original and adjusted the levels, cleaned up the green channel, duplicated the pic and did a fairly heavy gaussian blur and placed this layer in soft light mode and then reduced the saturation to a pleasing level. Erased the eye area and mouth area from the guassian blur layer.

The second one had the addition of a soft light lilac layer in soft light mode added and then adjusted with hue/sat.

[ScottBragg]

Originally Posted by Photo678

Looks pretty good.

My only issue is around the eyes....she kind of look likes she has black eyes....with the effect of high key lighting that you gave, those shadows should be a little duller, and a little softer.

Other than that...tight work.

I've taken some of the advice here and reworked her photo a bit. Nothing major as I'm fairly happy with the shot.

I'll post it as a reply to my own further down the list.

[ScottBragg]

Originally Posted by Panpan

I went with a softer light effect.

Pierre

I like it. I have several of her with a soft warm light already. The house we were shooting in had gold/yellow walls.

[ScottBragg]

Originally Posted by Panpan

This is a high key treatment, Closer poster style. I also made a few more corrections.

Pierre

I used desaturated skin tones very sparingly as it tends to make the model look slightly ill. You did a good job here of avoiding that. The cloudy background is a bit odd thogh.

[ScottBragg]

Originally Posted by Duv

Welcome aboard ScottBragg!! I was experimenting to see if I could get your high key effect and had to give up. Here's one the I angled a bit and cropped tightly.

Cheers

Dave

I like the position you put her in here. It adds a bit of action and intensity to the image. She's leaning forward in an active pose here. I like it.

The high key affect was a 10+ step process. I'll dig up the original PSD and post a small snippet on how I achieved it. Hint: distort->diffuse glow and masking are your friend.

[ScottBragg]

Originally Posted by mcacioppo

a couple things jump out at me that i would just have removed / subdued by habbit:

spot on left cheek (our left, not hers)
lines on neck
dark shadow/bump on forehead
and also i might have opened up the right eye a little (our right)

other than that, the light looks a lot better than the original photo

I took some of these suggestions and reworked her a bit. I'll post it in a followup to my own post so everyoene gets it.

[ScottBragg]

Originally Posted by Cassidy

Looking at the before and after, the after shot whilst it looks soft, to my eye looks too soft to the point of blurry, unless this lack of distinction is what you are after.

I found that by cleaning up the green channel you actually removed most of the flaws such as dark spots and ruddiness.

I played around with the original and adjusted the levels, cleaned up the green channel, duplicated the pic and did a fairly heavy gaussian blur and placed this layer in soft light mode and then reduced the saturation to a pleasing level. Erased the eye area and mouth area from the guassian blur layer.

The second one had the addition of a soft light lilac layer in soft light mode added and then adjusted with hue/sat.

The focal point of the image, and it comes out in the full 8x10 print, is the lips.

I'll play around with the channels and see what i can come up with. THe gren channel makes sense because of the way JPG compresses.

[ScottBragg]

Originally Posted by ScottBragg

Looking for comments on the final product here. I've attached both the original image and the final retouch.

Retouching done in Photoshop.

Thanks for your feedback..

Here's the retouch from the suggestions here;

[Cassidy]

Scott, it is hard to critique, as we all have our own personal preferences and so obviously, knowing the desired direction/end result etc. are more helpful in being able to more objectively provide a critique.

I do prefer your second version personally as it appears clearer and less ghoulish (for want of a better description)