Gurus - Pl. critique... Is this good bad or ugly?

[Vinay]

Hi there,

Glad to have found this forum!

Can I request the gurus out there to give me some critical feedback on a few pics that I have worked on?

Also could you rate it on a scale of 1 to 10 - 1 being bad and 10 being good.

The pics are are at http://www.thevugroup.com/eval/evalplease.html

This would honestly be appreciated.

Thanks,

Vinay

[kyo]

I'm not a guru perhaps, but I do have some comments on each image.

1 - Overall a pretty nice job, but there are some oddities in the reflections. The right side of the man doesn't really appear to be natural. Compared to the original, you can see where you lost some of the darks that made it look as if he were coming out of the water, now it is a bit flat and looks a bit chopped off. As common with cloning, there are also some very obvious repeated waves in the background.. a couple artificial dark areas in a few places would probably make it different enough to look more natural.

2 - I have to say, I like the original photograph a lot better. It is interesting, it has flow. To me the retouched version is fairly boring and unnatural feeling. I think this is a case where 'less is more' comes into effect. Some selective removal of stray hairs would perhaps yield a more interesting image? taking out a few frays to keep things a little more controlled and streamlined along with some overall retouching to make things 'pop' a little might be a better approach. However, this is just my opinion of course, the technical work here is good, it's just a matter of what you find appealing.

3 - A very nice job overall. The only thing i would adjust is the length of the womans arm that you rebuilt, it is a bit short and the hand is in a somewhat unnatural position. You might try finding a hand from another image to copy in that is at a better angle for that side of the body. On a second look, the middle of the bag doesn't seem as 'blurred' as the rest, perhaps a very soft shadow there would help. Great job on the boys arm.

4 - Well done. The only thing I would do is to bring back some of the original skin texture as the cheeks look a little bit too painted. You can do this by either dropping the opacity of the painted layer very slightly, or by adding a bit of noise to that layer to match the natural grain of the image.

5 - Another good job. I personally wouldn't have gone as extreme with bringing the highlights down, but it is done very well. I think the overall effect is a bit 'flat', but some curves adjustments might give it a little more 'pop'.

Overall I'd give the technical work a 6, though as I noted I dislike the composition of a couple images.

Thanks for sharing.

Kyle

[Vinay]

Hello Kyle,

Appreciate the candid feedback. That's the kind of feedback what I was looking for.

More later...

V

[aaRonology101]

number 2 is a big no-no ..

other than that i think they came out rather well ..

good job!