qritique please...

[Diego*]

the last few days ive lost some sleep trying to get this retouching down.
been reading al over the internet about techniques and such. And I wanted to try some of them, and give it my best shot, too see where I stand on the "skill ladder":P

I've found a picture on this forum, that I thought would be nice to practice with, I dont remember who's it is, hope you dont mind.

It is still a work in progress, I was hoping to get some tips to help me trough the process of retouching this photo.

so here goes:
http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/4...ce1anb2kb8.jpg

-adjusted the colors to get more of a realistic skintone
-used the healingbrush to get rid of the large imperfections(pimpels,wrinkles.)
-made the eyewhites whiter(desaturated the reds)
-reprocessed the image in RAW to get betterlight for the eyes(from the godmother video)
- I tried to use the D&B technique, on the pores ont he left cheeck, the white spots under her left eye and under the right eye, and removed some wrinkleson her lower lip.

I'm having problems with retouching under the eyes, on the right if you look closely, because of the dodging there is a bit of an oversaturated part under the right eye, any tips on how to correct this? if i dodge less, then the shadow stays to much...

I still want to get rid of the light hairs near the eyebrow and mayb clip some hair, and work a bit on the lips.but other then that I'm kind of stuck

I need qritique to keep improving, so bring it on!!

[KR1156]

the more you work with smooth skin using D&B, the more you'll notice those nasty, saturated areas, especially when you do heavy dodging in areas like the neck lines.

one tip i can give you is do all your retouching and cleanup work, then do your color moves above all. keep your color work above all, this way if you need to go back and make some adjustments, you can turn your color work off, do all your adjustments, then turn color moves back on and have total control over the file.

color will change often, so you never want to make any of your color moves permanent.

[Diego*]

thnx KR1156 , thats a helpfull coment, will defenitly start using that in my next work.
could u give me some tips for cleaning up under the right eye, because when i use the healing brush i tend to lose some of the eyelashes, thats why I tried D&B there. what would be your aproach on that?

[KR1156]

Yea that looks like the best bet, you can't use healing there bc of the eye lashes. I usually don't use healing too much anyway, i like 100% opacity clone, with additional fixing on areas that are in focus. I don't like any traces of retouching.

*Dodge that shadow under her eye and you should be good. When you work on hirez images, you don't have to completely rid her of natural lines under the eyes, clean up the obvious uggly looking ones, but it's much better to leave a little detail there to keep it natural. Every shot will require more, or less work under the eyes. But don't wipe it all out, it's very obvious and unnatural.

[Cassidy]

Looks much more natural diego, maybe drop a bit of red or magenta according to my screen. Those awful misplaced false eyelashes leave me in quandry though

[Diego*]

thnx for the help,

I tried 100% cloning on a separate layer, then deleted it where the lashes are, and took a huge brush on 0% hardness, and deleted a bit from the bottom of the eye down to get a bit more of the darkness under the eye back. looks more natural now, ill be posting my progress soon.

Originally Posted by Cassidy

Looks much more natural diego, maybe drop a bit of red or magenta according to my screen. Those awful misplaced false eyelashes leave me in quandry though

thanks, also thanks for pointing out the eyelashes, forgot about them


i anyone has more tips keep them coming, I apreciate all the help i can get