Opinions/Advice needed on skin technique

[gem1980]

Hi,

I am fairly new on here and am determined to perfect my skin retouching.

I've attached an link to a picture I found on a forum here. The model had quite bad skin, which i've retouched and i've also tweaked her nose, lips and chin. Im pretty pleased but I feel it still lacks that freshness of "real" skin.

I used the healing brush and dodge technique until i was happy that all the blemishes had gone. I then started with the filters and layers.

I have recently bought two books....."Restoration & Retouching" by Katrin Eismann and "Skin" by Lee Varis. If anyone can point out a good technique from either book, or point me in the right direction of another good book/web tutorial that would be great.


please follow link
http://www.retouchpro.com/gallery/sh...1/limit/recent

(please note image is a bit blurry because everytime i uploaded the larger better version, the google ads on the right cut off half the picture, so i stuck with the lower res version)

any advice very much appreciated.

thanks
gem

[Damo77]

I think you've done a lovely job.

[DiamondsDr47]

Hi! you need to color correct the image(or make sure in what color space you work and when you save your image for web)

[DiamondsDr47]

Not just read learn from it, sometimes it pays to read it twice or more...

[Damo77]

DiamondsDr47, I'm not sure what you're referring to. The colour looks nice to me, and the image is in sRGB, which is correct for web.

[DiamondsDr47]

Well save the image, open it in photoshop and see it for yourself.

www.edgarmaivel.com

[Damo77]

Yes, I did, I'm looking at it now. Perhaps the skin is a little "hot" in the shadow areas, but all-in-all I think it's pretty good colour.

[gem1980]

Thanks for all the comments. Just so im clear on what your saying......is there too much red? I never know the best way to control colour....i tend to just play around with the channel mixer, colour and saturation, colour balance, curves and levels.......should i really be using all these or is one method better than others??

this is a link to another image i retouched yesterday, i was aiming for the more 'dior' look. I used the heal/clone/dodge and burn methods to clear blemishes.....then using a highlight layer and a shadow layer then using gaussian blur.

Does this have the same colour problem?? is it a bit too red?

http://www.retouchpro.com/gallery/sh...6/limit/recent

[Damo77]

Nice, but I think you've gone too white with the eyes. Also I think it's a bit weird what you've done to her ear.

I can't comment on the colour right now, I'm afraid, I'm on an uncalibrated monitor atm.

[gem1980]

I just noticed the ear thing....i was so caught up in doing the face that i've forgotton to erase the shadow layer thats blurred onto her ear. Im gona go clear it up.


and yes i agree eyes are too white.

thanks Damo!