25$ Portrait retouch

[sirespen]

Hi there! What do you think?

before
after
before-detail
after-detail

Thx in advance!

[TommyO]

For $25 that's pretty good !
Actually, the level of retouch is perfect for portraits. Hopefully, it did not take you too long, or at least it will not take as long in the future as you perfect your workflow. In the US, this is the level expected with portraits, weddings, etc. You actually went a little further on the skin than most would.

[madclark]

No offense, and maybe I'm cheap and/or faster, but for a quarter that price on the model tests I work on I would also take care of neck crease and the rest of the flyaway hairs in the background. Artistically though, I would continue to clean up the freckles in the face and perfect the makeup.

I wouldn't pay $25 for it and the photographers I work with definitely wouldn't pay $25 for so I don't personally think it's right to ask an uneducated consumer to pay for it. For $25 I would expect more hand retouched D&B and a lot more perfected elements like the hair cleaned up, not a lot of blended surface blurring and brightened levels like I see.

It's definitely an improvement over the original, but not a $25 improvement.

[sirespen]

Hi! Thx. for the comments! Actually I do it for free. I forgot to mention the photographer...It's Henrik Bengtsson (www.imaginara.se)
I blured a copy of the top layer set it to overlay at very low opacity to give it a bit of glow. Do you think it would better without/less?
For 6$ you would do the same retouch + D&B?
I'm not a professional retoucher, and surely not as fast as you, but that sounds insane. How much time would you spend on such an image?

Greetings

[madclark]

No I definitely wouldn't D&B the entire skin area. That would take forever. But I would D&B the freckles which is great to lift the tones in those areas.

I really don't like using blurring at all unless it's to blend pore structure that's too contrasted and only after I've fixed any blemishes. I would use the Healing Brush to fix the majority of blemishes quickly. Then I would do a D&B layer to even things out. And only then might I do a surface blur or something to refine the entire pore structure.

The picture you have there is actually pretty simple. Maybe a half hour to 45 minutes. It would be the hair that would take the most time to work out.

[CoreyByas]

Well, as for retouching goes around here, because I had some wounder of that! A local place here in town does retouch & they charge $80 & pay the guy $12/hr & he does at times about 5 images in an hour & these are just general public coming in. He does it on the side and says he charges min of $25/photo.

[sirespen]

@ Madclark....You charge 8$ for 45' of work? That would be 6€ and it that case I would probably for free.
I worked 90 Minutes on that image. But once one has the "perfect" work flow i think I'll be much faster. I attach a small tiff version with the layer structure in it, let me know what do you think.

http://www.box.net/shared/4v9i2ktmbj

Ciao

[sirespen]

mhmm, the blurred overlay layer is nonsense. I'll remove it.

[Kenotic]

i like how the skin is now glowing

here are my suggestions:
fix flyaway hairs
fix eyebrows
add luminance to the teeth
perhaps lighten the shine of the hair a tad more
fix the neck... it looks like fat
make both sets of eyelashes more even in length

[Rohape]

I thought the work was great. I felt the flyaway hairs added something, don't know what, but it looked good for this shot. Maybe would have made her look more like a mannequin if they weren't there. Guess it would be one of those things to see which looked better.
This next one is nothing on you, but it really drew my eye and kind of bugged me was the softbox reflection in the eye. It completely took away the impact of the eyes.
It looks great I think! Good Work!

[sirespen]

Hi! Kenotic imho the improvements you suggest are excessive for a portrait shot. I mean, it's a portrait...Not a commercial shot.

Rohape, I thought the same when I saw the shot...The soft box reflection is very distracting...