My first beauty retouch - all C&C appreciated

[borkiss]

Hello everybody!
I'm new to this forum and new at photo retouching. This is my first attempt, please, tell me what do you think?


Photo of Madonna Here are the links to higher-rez versions:

Original: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4074/...eaeb1dcf_o.jpg
(Photo by Sang Tan / AP)
Retouch 1: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4102/...e830a13f_o.jpg
(Photo by Sang Tan / AP
Retouch by Borislava Borisova)
Retouch 2: http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4142/...ed856b5c_o.jpg
(Photo by Sang Tan / AP
Retouch by Borislava Borisova)

Мany, many thanks!!!

[mistermonday]

Borkiss, you did a pretty good job on a photo not taken under ideal conditions.
Here are a few of my observations looking at image from viewer's perspective.
- left side, Madona's hair and shoulder of person beside here, is blurred and has the appearance of being cloned over.
- Linear streaks across forehead appear lighter than rest of fh, at least in my download.
- Eyelashes look good but bottom of eyelid seems to be smudged away. At zoomed out view it looks like eyeball is pink at the bottom (as in an irritated eye) and when zooming in it looks like the bottom of the eyelid has detail smudged away.
- Skin color on lower neck seems too cyan and that area appears a bit patchy.
- small stip on chin at right uneven an lost some detail
- A few other lines noted where transition between light and dark is to high (IMHO).
Overall a good first effort.
Regards, Murray

[Boneappetit]

I agree with mistermonday, for a first attempt is a good work. Besides of what mm said, I guess your portrait needs to be sharpen, without it works look blury.

[spotter]

You have done quite well with balancing out her hair.
There is a bit at the bottom left that is too chunky on the hair though.
On retouch 2 there are diagonal streaks across her forehead.
Good mouth and jawline on both.
Her eyebrows standout too much for my liking but her eyes look much cleaner than the original.

[kav]

I'd remove all work done on the makeup, then look at the makeup in a number of magazine photos of celebrity editorials. This is just a suggestion because it should give you a better idea of what the normal range of makeup should be. This gives it too much of a 1960s appearance. The eyelashes are made unnaturally black and lengthened heavily and to a point beyond what would be normal for this kind of shot. Lipstick is painted beyond the lipline and the original color was better. The eyebrows are filled in to the point of a painted textureless look. The cheeks have too much color added to them. It wouldn't be hard to adjust. I think it must've been difficult given your original source material, as it probably would take very little adjustment before that photo would start to look fake given the soft texture and heavy sharpening that's apparent in the unretouched. A couple other things there's a sharp change where the hair is added, and the eyes are whitened yet in a manner which doesn't provide any direction to the lighting on the whites. They need some curvature. If you made the makeup a lot more subtle and backed off just slightly on the lines around the mouth, it would look pretty natural. It's not that the makeup couldn't take some touchup, but it feels like it needs to be worked on for what it is, not turned into something that it's not.