Would love to get some input...

[keren7]

I have a photo that I retouched and I would love to get some feedback on the touch ups that I made and also which background do you think is best for that photo.

Thanks,
Keren.

[AdamZx3]

I dont want to come off the wrong way, so take this as a way to improve your photo's, I just dont want to sound to harsh, as I see your just beginning in retouching.

First off, the blue background looks very fake, to be honest the original looks the best, the other two backgrounds scream retouched. (more on the blured background in a sec)

The retouch:
Good job on the baby's reflection spots, removing the date stamp and brightening the yellow shirt.

The face is a mess, the details is blurred away to the point of it looking muddy. The color correction makes him look like he's beet red, you will probably need to calibrate your monitor, what looks good on there now can look a lot different on a calibrated screen. Also when the color correction was made the uneven skin tone was magnified making the skin look very blotchy. Try the tutorial in the link below to see if you can get the skintones closer and dont worry about bluring the skin, its looks better left alone...later on when you learn more advanced techniques you can get it looking perfect if you want. If the skin is still blotchy an easier fix would be to feather the selection and then adjust just that patch separately, like in the tutorial only its just affecting the one spot.
http://www.smugmug.com/help/skin-tone

The blurred background looks pretty bad. Understanding some photography fundamentals will help here, when a background is blurred out of focus its not in a linear fashion such as above...the things further away are blurred more than objects that are closer, if the lens aperture was shallow enough to blur the couch that much then parts of his chest and forehead would be blurred as well, but since the couch is further than his should the couch would be still blurier than the shoulder. This article can explain it far better than I can, you can google aperture and depth of field for some more info, this was the first one I pulled up...
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...h-of-field.htm


Read over these and try again, and post your results...retouching can be tedious but I find it very rewarding... don't give up

[keren7]

Made some changes. Is that Better?

I think my problem is After I take care of the oiliness in the face, I duplicate the layer and then it gets too much.

[AdamZx3]

Getting much better, your on the right track, but still is getting muddy and the skin color is still pretty hot, can you post your workflow as how you are going about fixing the skin?

Heres what I did:

1.Open in PS and add a curves adj. layer, make an S curve to increase contrast a bit, which increases saturation, so I hit ok then switch the blend mode to luminosity to make it increase contrast but not shift colors.

2. Sample a good skintone on the forehead and create new layer with color blend mode, with a low opacity brush, go over the blotchy areas to even color.

3. Duplicate layer and use the patch tool to select a circle around shiny spots and then selected a good source, then let go...will make it flat and muddy looking, repeat for all spots. Now decrease opacity to 0% and increase until the shiny spots are visible enough to create depth but still enough to hide the spots. You can use this for the bags under the eyes (didnt get to that though) but would have to adjust on another layer...best to do it on a blank layer using the clone and healing brush then fade away.

4. After retouching then the skin needs some color correction, this will be the hardest part to get, and will only come with practice...I just started doing skintones and its not an easy thing (for me at least) I followed the same steps as in that tutorial using curves and lots of tweaking...then I made a mask for the layers and painted the adjustment on the face so it was the only part affected. I also warmed up the babys skin some, but I think their supposed to be a bit pinkish.