Couple of maternity retouches, C&C please.

[kerl]

Hello Guys and Gals, here is a few of my first retouches for a friend of mine who does maternity photography. I would appreciate any comments or crits on these. I'm new to this retouching thing and want to learn as much as possible, and yes I have permission to use these photos here.

Thanks alot.

jason

before_1 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/12321621@N04/2452261546/
after_1 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/12321621@N04/2451435157/
before_2 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/12321621@N04/2452261370/
after_2 - http://www.flickr.com/photos/12321621@N04/2451435117/

[dsgoen]

I hope that this won't hurt your feelings, but I think that the first picture is so over processed that it looks a lot like a black-velvet painting. That was my initial reaction.

Sometimes I have trouble knowing when to stop. I think that this might also be your problem here.

[Nikolas]

I would have to agree with dsgoen. I think the purpose of maternity photographs is to bring out the natural beauty in the women in the pictures, and retouching should be very minimal. It's clear to see that you have some fantastic talent, and really enjoy what you're doing, but maybe bring it back a bit for these particular pictures. I hope this helps you out!

[kerl]

Thanks dsgoen and nikolas for your honest crits. No offense here. I posted them to get peoples honest opinions and try to learn from them. I'm just glad that the photog liked them! The originals were had a ton of noise in them and i struggled getting the skin tone smooth. I used the healingbrush and d&b and the last two layers were curve (light and dark) where I painted on low opacity to try to smoothe the skin and give it more depth. i think maybe this is where i over did it.

Thanks again.

Jason

[dsgoen]

I'm glad you weren't bothered. People get so upset on Internet forums and forget that criticism is often meant to help.

I think that you are on the right track. I will also state, for the record, that I am not a big fan of the recent trends in fashion photography, which I also consider overdoing it, so I am certainly not in step with the current fads. (I also hate ring lights; I hated them in the 70s and 80s, and I hate them now. But that's a different subject all together).

Have fun.

[TommyO]

Hi Jason,
I like the images and would be interested in knowing what direction you were given and what the client noted as desired. That makes a lot of difference in our critiques.
Anyway, noting the previous issues with noise, etc.... I think you did pretty well. I would have liked to have seen a bit more natural tones in the the first one, along with a bit more sharpening.
One idea would be to have your photographer take several shots with different exposures of the same image using a RAW format. You could then accomplish much of your retouching using a RAW editor. Then to improve the overall pop and sharpness you could then merge these into an HDR image. Just a thought....

Good luck and continue posting !