First Retouch Posted

[spydercam]

Hi everyone. Just joined and figured I would see how I fair in the game of retouch.
Let me know what you think, thanks.

before

after

BE HARSH! Okay don't be too harsh.

[amin]

woooow

she will be happy if she see this deffrent

thanks

[spydercam]

Thanks amin.

Anyone wanna lash out at me and correct anything?

[ohfrankyboy]

I am sure you were trying to achieve a glamour look, but I think you overdone it, the white is too white, the eyes and lips are overdone, but hey dont worry if this is your first retouch you will learn with time!

[spydercam]

Yeah definetly going for a glamour look. Went with an Angel soft face look. Desaturated then a color "soft light" overlay. Thanks though.

[MBChamberlain]

Well...harsh huh?
Ok, you're using a chainsaw to open an egg...

Seriously though, it's a VERY heavy handed retouch. The trick to skin is to remove the imperfections (which includes reducing the appearance of pores) but not to the point that they start to look plastic.

I've attached a really quick shot at this, notice that the skin texture is greatly reduced, but nevertheless intact. (I like the freckles, so I left a lot of them.)

My best advice is to back up, take the techniques one at a time, and master each one. Ideally you should be able to retouch one part of a photo, and do it so well that it not only doesn't look out of place with the rest of the photo, it doesn't look like it's been retouched at all.

I also differentiate between retouching and stylizing a photo. They are two drastically different skill sets, and developing them separately will prevent you from using stylizing tricks to cover up bad retouching.

Cheers,
Michael

[spydercam]

Thank you for the reply. Again I was really going for an extreme glam look. In the high resolution copy you can see plenty of skin texture. It was almost 2000 pixels and non jpg version though.

I don't care for freckles so I killed them.

I am wondering though if you meant to add that much noise to the entire picture or you just were doing a quickie and didn't have the time to add a mask to everything except for skin?

[MBChamberlain]

Even for "extreme glam" I think it's overdone. I would be interested to see a cropped portion of the photo at full size to be able to give a more accurate critique. Now, what you did may be what you think of as extreme glam, but you asked how you fair, and I say you're amature. I also think you have potential. Keep at it and work hard, I have no doubt you'll get there.

I have attached crops from images done in both the Covergirl and Vogue "extreme glam" styles for reference.

Oh yeah, the grain. It's partly because I was working too fast, and partly because it's hard to add grain to small photos.

Cheers,
Michael

[spydercam]

Well one spot is dead on, amature. lol
I do think I have tons to learn and definetly no where near the pros but I'm trying to learn more and more every day. Your tough but I see where your going with the texture know. I will try to get you a cropped pic later but know that I've seen your sources it's not gonna be the same, mine is just abit of noise to show some texture.

Thanks again for the critique bud. I look forward to hearing from you on others in the future. I actually have been working on some more so I'll post up later when I get a chance.

[BagLady]

Hello Spydercam and welcome to RetouchPro!

I'll lash out at you... I realize that you've just started but I must say that you've gone WAAAAAAAY overboard! There's nothing left of the original image!!!! A good job should appear NATURAL. MBChamberlain has given you some great advice! I would suggest taking a look at the Photo Retouching forum in RetouchPro. You'll find more information than you need. Good luck!

BagLady

[bkravchenko]

We all came to the conclusion that you are still learning, and they are right, you have a lot to learn. The one thing that I have noticed with beginners in retouching is that they try too hard to make the photo look different. It's almost a mentality of, the original is bad and it is up to me to, through photoshop, to make it look so different and better that people will be blown away. As you practice, just keep in the back of your mind that subtlety is the key.

And remember, some photos are just bad, and some photographers are just bad and they are, too, looking for photoshop to fix their problems. Photoshop is not there to create a photo but to enhance an already good one.

[spydercam]

Thanks everybody. I do appreciate it.