Critique Please

[chrisjphoto]

Hi I would just like to say that I'm a new member to RetouchPro and I'm happy to be apart of the community.

This was the most demanding retouch I ever did. Everything before this has been very basic stuff like removing tiny blemishes. I Was looking for some feed back. I have only bin retouching for about 3 months. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. The tools i used were the Band-aid tool for small pimples and fly away hair. I used doge and burn for skin tone and Liquify jaw line. Am i headed in a good direction?

http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/9018/uploadu.jpg

[JayKittle]

it looks good mate. I would tone down the highlight on her nose as it is vaguely distracting, but don't get rid of it. taking too much of it out will make it look painted. these lovely little highlights give the subject more "life"

bloody good job on the skin. though this photo does not necessarily need it, i like to use a surface blur of 20 Pixels / 20 Threshold and mask it in at 20-30% opacity, excluding eyes, nose, mouth, eyebrows, etc. this will help smooth out pores, but does not eliminate them.

[chrisjphoto]

Thanks so much for the advice! I didn't realize the highlight on the nose until you mentioned it. Gonna take care of that now. I'll also try out that surface blur. Thanks again for the response, its greatly appreciated.

[andycandymaster]

its improve a lot from the original stock image. I like how you brighten up the lightening and fixed her skin to an almost flawless complexion. Good job on your work.