photo retouching, could you critic please

[rsphotocreation]

Here is one of my photo retouch I did within an hour.
Tell me what you think about that please.

[Byakuya]

I'd say the technique you used was appropraite for the hair and the surroundings to beef up the picture and make it less washed out, but the over-blown highlights on the nose and forehead are problematic. Perhaps you could have used soft light on the face and masked it in then adjusted the opacity. Also, lower the opacity on that blur. it's a bit too much and try to carry the effect to her neck between the hairs by making ur brush really small and soft and zooming right in.

[ralph257]

Always hard to tell on screen, color looks good, face looks to be a little soft,
hair lacks detail & went to dark, eyes need something to pull you in.
It's a nice image though.
What was your process?
From the images I have seen in here seems like a lot of ppl destroy pixels

[LQQKER]

Of course this is just an opinion but I think you've changed too much, to the point her identity is in question. Her facial structure is not the same. She had a rather subtle square jaw line in the original. You changed the face shadows giving her a different more oval, symmetrical like structure. Her mouth shape, nose, I thought was fine the way it was, with the half grin which gave her a unique sexy look. You also eliminated the slight smile lines as well, giving her face a flatter appearance.
As far as the finer details, it's hard to say due to the low resolution of your post. I agree with the comments pertaining to the blown out highlights and the softness (unless that was your aim). Too much contrast in the hair took away much of the detail. It would have been better to have had separate before and after images for comparison to offer a true critic of the finer details of your work (skin texture, etc).

[AFrazier]

I'm personally okay with the amount of softening on the skin. I've seen worse in magazines. Things like that, in my opinion, are a matter of taste. I usually reduce the opacity on my skin softening layer until it suits me, and I've done some that are softened worse than that (which doesn't necessarily make it the right thing to do, only that I've done it).

[DavidBickley]

I agree with Lqqker here. In my opinion it's pretty overdone. People have pores. Retouching in many cases is something that should go completely unnoticed unless you're looking at a before/after. I suppose that if you want to make her look plastic, that's one thing. If you want to keep someone looking realistic you need to preserve the texture of their skin.

[rsvrdogg86]

Originally Posted by DavidBickley

I agree with Lqqker here. In my opinion it's pretty overdone. People have pores. Retouching in many cases is something that should go completely unnoticed unless you're looking at a before/after. I suppose that if you want to make her look plastic, that's one thing. If you want to keep someone looking realistic you need to preserve the texture of their skin.

blurring is definitely something you want to stay away from. if its not for any professional or high quality image you can sometimes get away with it, but even still this needs to be pulled back. also the hair has been completely blacked out in areas. depth is one thing, but you do not want to black/blow out detail.