Retouched Political Candidate

[mikenna14]

I found a random image from Google while searching for something completely different, but I found this and I thought "why not" so I started retouching it. I haven't done too much; I changed the colors of his clothes and the background is a flag now. I did some clone stamp work on his face and added a blur to his "beard" trying to make him look like he cleaned up more.

I'm a senior in high school and I'm working on this for a project. I'm a little knowledgable with Photoshop, so keep that in mind. If you have any tips please tell me. I found this site by looking up "retouching" so I'm brand new to this. Thanks for the help .

The first image is the retouched sample. The second is the original image so you can compare them. Both of them are at very low quality levels because the originals are at 300 resolution before so I made them a lot tinier to fit the upload size.

All help is welcomed, thanks a lot.

P.S. - I made up the name "Burroughs" thing, I have no idea who that guy is actually.

[FlaFloyd]

I like it. The white "slash" from the flag at the top of his head is a little off-putting. I would reduce that.

[Rohape]

Not bad so far. Here are some points I saw.

PROS:
-I really like the touch with the flag pin.
-Excellent job on the tie. It looks MUCH better.

CONS:
-You can see the edge of all your cosmetic work.
-The eyes look a little unnatural.
-There's a dark part of your background the blends in with the hair at the top of his head so all you see is the little fuzz at the front of his head giving his head a strange look.

Possible Solutions:
-Try a different blending mode for your corrections layer, slightly blur your corrections layer to make it blend in a little better, even add an FX (outerglow, emboss, etc.) effect to that layer.
-Try accentuating his natural eye color instead.
-Shift your background so it doesn't run in to the shadows.

I think that's about it from me.
Good Luck!

[mikenna14]

Thanks for the help. Can anyone help me with the typeface for the header? I can't find a decent one that I like, so the one i have now is temporary.

[Rohape]

Ah, I wish I had such access to information when I was in school.
Good Luck with your school project.