Critiques - - New members first post...

Forky · #1 03-10-2006, 10:34 AM

I've been told on another board where I do these types of retouch modifications that I should think about doing it for money. Would someone like to take a look at a couple of before and afters to tell me if you agree/disagree and if you don't agree, what can I improve on to get to the point where I could get paid for re-touches. This first one was really decent to start with mainly because of the model. But the photo in my opinion lacked punch. I gave it some.
before:
http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/846...5dfd3af45b.jpg

after:
http://img55.imageshack.us/img55/141...delove21ym.jpg

I'll put more up for ideas and critique when I find them.

Swampy · #2 03-10-2006, 11:31 AM

Great job on the eyes, but IMHO the after is too over exposed.

Forky · #3 03-10-2006, 12:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Swampy

Great job on the eyes, but IMHO the after is too over exposed.

Thank you. I agree, it is blown out in areas. I didn't take the original photo, but if you look, the before is also overexposed. There really was no way for me to fix that since the values in those areas was already 255/255/255. I did ask for the original RAW file, but she didn't capture in raw sadly.

Here's another of the same girl.

before:
http://img387.imageshack.us/img387/4...462a3a3816.jpg

after:

http://img483.imageshack.us/img483/9...ndelove6vc.jpg

KevinJohn · #4 03-10-2006, 01:51 PM

Hi Forky,

I'm new too. Welcome to both of us then...

They both look much better. But they look enhanced -- not natural. If that is look you're going for then great. If not, then getting better material is a good place to start.

The first retouch is blurry. Though it looks punchier, it also looks unnatural. The original has a lot to do with the end result.

The second retouch is blurry and over-sharpened. If you look at her hair in areas around her eyes and other small details you can see artifacts that are the natural result of over-sharpening. Try reading some of the tutorials on this site to get more natural results.

The main thing is that people should not expect miracles. If this girl wants some cute shots for the web these will suffice, but if she's looking to book modelling gigs then her better bet is to get better shots and not expect to spin gold from straw.

Cheers...

Kraellin · #5 03-10-2006, 01:59 PM

forky,

welcome to RP.

looking only at the first one, you're right that the original has blown out whties. however, that can be corrected with a little work, or at least improved.

made a duplicate of the background layer.
made a new, blank raster layer above that.
sampled a skin color with the color picker.
used the air brush to paint in more skin color on the blank layer.
did this several times with different, appropriate, sampled skin colors to get a nice blend and mix.
i also did this for the hair where it was blown out.
ran a gausian blur on the air brushed layer.

at this stage i did a merge all and paste as new layer. then i copied that layer to a new image.
on the new image i cropped it.
i also ran a curves adjustment layer
ran a brightness/contrast adjustment layer.
ran a color balance layer.
ran the AIM plugin sharpness.

and that got me pretty good except for one thing. her arms were almost blue and dark at this point. so, i selected the lower half of the image with a gradient on the edges for blending and ran a color balance on the selected area.

so, to critique your work. i liked that you cropped. good job there. i like that you blurred the background. also good. i chose to darken the background rather than blur, but that's just a personal choice and nothing wrong with blurring.

as you've seen, the blown out whites can be fixed.
in both your images you're tending to lighten quite a bit. this is ok, but just be aware not everyone is going to want that. i suspect you did this as part of a contrasting stage, but just be aware of it and always check with the client.

and you certainly dont have to go the way i went, especially with the darkening. i darkened somewhat because of the color of her hair and light skin. the darker background makes for a good contrast.

also, you've got quite a bit of contrast in the lighting of her. the face is quite light while the shoulders and chest are quite a bit darker. this can get tricky, especially in color balance when going this way. darkening tends to blue, while lightening tends to yellow or green. contrasting tends to redden. so always check the color balance on areas you choose to lighten or darken.

and just going from memory on the second image, my biggest problem with that one is the brightness. other than that it looked pretty good. and take that with a grain of salt also. some folks like the bright white look.

craig

bart_hickman · #6 03-10-2006, 05:07 PM

I like what you did to the colors. I agree with swampy about it needing to have the exposure turned down a bit. Both photos seem very blurry--is that intentional? Aside from that, I noticed you blurred the background and left behind the resultant unnatural blur "glow" around her head.

When you blur background, you need to not only extract or isolate the object (the girl in this case), but you also need to erase the object from the background prior to blurring. In Paintshop Pro X, the object remover is excellent for this. In Photoshop, the healing or patch brushes will work. Cloning inward from the edges prior to blurring also works. It doesn't have to be perfect because you're going to blur it--just good enough to remove the halo/glow.

From a skill standpoint, I'm sure you could do this for money. Particularly if you think you work fast enough to be productive from a business standpoint--eg., if that retouch took an hour, that might not be fast enough to make a living.

Bart

drrklepper · #7 03-12-2006, 09:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Forky

Thank you. I agree, it is blown out in areas. I didn't take the original photo, but if you look, the before is also overexposed. There really was no way for me to fix that since the values in those areas was already 255/255/255. I did ask for the original RAW file, but she didn't capture in raw sadly.

Here's another of the same girl.

before:
http://img387.imageshack.us/img387/4...462a3a3816.jpg

after:

http://img483.imageshack.us/img483/9...ndelove6vc.jpg

I think with a little more practice you could have a very nice photo. I really think that at this point you are overdoing it and making them have too much of an unnatural look. For example, are the girls eyes realy that shade of green? If not why did you make them so?