Beauty Retouch - Please Critique

[DC_Headshots]

Hi Everyone,
I've taken a long Hiatus from RetouchPro because my Photography career has really taken off but I'm back and wanted to put up some before and afters for critique.
Thanks to anyone who wants to comment in advance!

[gse123]

I think they are very nice - I especially like the one with the chains. Really good job on reconstructing the hair, and toning down the shoulder size etc. Only thing I can see that I would change is that the arms (on the 'chains' woman) are a bit more pink/red in colour than the face. Great shots.

[DC_Headshots]

Thank you so much for your critique. I will definitely address the hue/sat of her arm! Hope you have a great holiday!

[unionroofer]

Sweet! I'm no pro, just now starting to expermint with retouching myself, but, I know your images look great. I especially love the skin tones and the hair reconstruction. Great work.

[Garf]

You've done a great job on the hair. The clean-up on the first pic is very commendable too; nice, clean and simple.

[marconi18]

Great work

[cyeh01]

Definitely on the right track! Great job so far, undoubtedly you spent a lot of time on these and the results show. On the chain image, I detect a bit of a halo-ing along her arm. Good job though overall.

[DC_Headshots]

Hi CYEH01,
Thank you very much for the comments. Would you mind explaining what you mean by Halo-ing? It love to fix it... if I know what it was :o/ - Thanks!!

[cyeh01]

The cause of the halo can be various. In this case if I had to guess, it looks like you tried to make the background a little darker to make your subject stand out. I'm guessing you applied a layer adjustment (to make the image darker) then just masked out your subject. In the process however, I think your mask overlapped into the background slightly. That might be why there seems like there's a halo around the girl particularly around the arm and the hair since it's not in the original image.

Great job on the hair by the way. Care to share how you filled it in?

Charles Lucima
www.lucima.com

[DC_Headshots]

Aaahhh... I was looking at the other arm! Thank you!

The hair was done with the pen tool and gaussian blur to match the blur of the image. Maybe add a little noise too...

[ShogunSho]

Hello there,

Just a note I'm nowhere expert just intermediate level.

At first I got confused a little bit because I'm very much used to seeing the before image comes first then follow by the after.

As for the first set, I do love the enhancement particularly the mood and tone that has improved. To me it's well done and I see nothing wrong

The next set, the girl with chain, I like this one the most but I kind of feel you might have some little bit more correction to make. In my opinion you have already done a great amount of job with the hair and few blemishes.

Originally, the model looked quite muscular/fit/ toned/ healthy sporty as well as masculine look to me (sorry I don't know which is the right word). As for the after image, I'm not sure if you are trying to make her turns into a more feminine look or still want to maintain that masculine bit in her. I think you've done well with reshaping her right shoulder. Somehow though I still see like a muscular bicep on her right arm. Another point is also her left forearm. Her arm really look muscular tense to me. You might also want to reshape her jaws a little bit?

It can be viewed in many ways based on what exactly is your purpose. You want to maintain some muscular / masculine appeal to the model and image as a whole. Or... you might make her completely fragile/delicate feminine instead while it would also be a good contrasting concept with the tough chain around her.

Just my suggestion. Don't consider it too much...

[wallace30]

First time commenting here- just wanted to say I am very impressed with the chains image and how you took a masculine woman and feminized her- the arms look very realistic, I am also impressed with the hair- however I think the messed up hair on the original may have worked better with the chains.
Overall nice job.