Retouch challenge - Male headshot

[pixelzombie]

here's a different sort of shot to work with:

http://img221.imagevenue.com/img.php..._122_397lo.jpg


this is hires and royalty free so you'll be able to include it in your portfolio, assuming it's good enough, enjoy...

[DannyRaphael]

Interesting shot. It will be interesting to see what folks do with it. Thanks for offering it for practice.

[palms1]

Pixelzombie thank you for the shot, it is great to have a image like this to practice on or in my case mess around with !
Just lately there have been a few techniques that I have wanted to try but never had the image to try it on ( tried about 3 on this ) And no it isnt good enough to keep in a portfolio ( if i had one that is ) but boy did I have some fun and will come back again. Cant wait to see what those with more experience at retouching come up with

Thank you again

Palms

[Wolfman]

Here are 2 extremes.

[i-inspire]

This isn't perfect, but I used a new technique I'm not familiar with. Critiques are welcome.

[0lBaldy]

I liked Wolfmans idea of doing a double..

LOL.. just noticed the dark cheek edges on the "Smoothie#.. Oh Well!! I spent enough time on these already and they are just for fun.. and I DID have fun doing these.. Thanks Pixelzombie

~~Original~ ~~Smoothie~~Rough~

[bartjoosen]

My try:
copied one half, paste and mirror.
Then some levels, eye adjustments, d&b a bit and some light and layer effects.


Bart

[KR1156]

come on guys....why don't you actually take the time and properly retouch this image. it's a piece that you can include in your books. great for beginners.

*if you're just messing around with photoshop and not a retoucher, don't mind my comments. but i would love to see what some peaople could come up with since the shot has no major flaws, it would be interesting to see where ppl can take it.

[saby]

Originally Posted by KR1156

come on guys....why don't you actually take the time and properly retouch this image. it's a piece that you can include in your books. great for beginners.

*if you're just messing around with photoshop and not a retoucher, don't mind my comments. but i would love to see what some peaople could come up with since the shot has no major flaws, it would be interesting to see where ppl can take it.

Why don't U inspire us?

[KR1156]

i dont got time to do things the right way today, but here's a rough sketch, 'bout 15min shifting things around, general color range i would take it.

wih such little image area...i tried hitting the jaw line, clean up eyes a bit.

maybe a more desat. look would work nice, not sure.

i would leave his forehead wrinkles as it serves purpose to his facial expression,,,,but if i had more time i would go in and d&b those uggly spots to clean it up a tad, but not that much.

i dont know, thats what i got so far.

[bartjoosen]

Maybe you should give the image a target like it should be used for some deodorant, or Wilkinson razors, or.... ?

[Rhasval]

Originally Posted by KR1156

come on guys....why don't you actually take the time and properly retouch this image. it's a piece that you can include in your books. great for beginners.

*if you're just messing around with photoshop and not a retoucher, don't mind my comments. but i would love to see what some peaople could come up with since the shot has no major flaws, it would be interesting to see where ppl can take it.

Ok here is my try. Probably is not the kind of retouch you expect but it is just to give a different view. It is true that is a good one to include in the books. I may include it in mine.
Critiques about the work are welcome.

[Svald7]

At this time I'm practicing the easy, natural looking approach. On this version, no smoothing at all, just softened the lines and a very light blur, plus color balancing.

[myfairies]

Wolfam, how did you do the one on the right? I like that effect a lot

[CaptainHook]

Looks like Wolfam used some kinda LCE to me..?

[KR1156]

i just dont get the point of running some wild filter on the image, or adding anything...i mean aren't you trying to learn anything here? but i gotta remember theres a lot of ppl here and i'd say 9 out of 10 aren't really interested in what i am.

at lest the giants won the superbowl!!!

[CaptainHook]

Originally Posted by KR1156

but i gotta remember theres a lot of ppl here and i'd say 9 out of 10 aren't really interested in what i am.

I think i am.
I'm gonna have a go at this in the next couple of days when i get
the chance. I like where you were heading.

[Wolfman]

I didn't run any filters like LCE if you are referring to Lucius Art. I don't have anything outside of CS3. Just some exaggerated moves in Adobe Camera Raw and high pass and some de-saturation. I don't remember all the steps I took... a lot of it is just instinct and trial and error. But what I described above is the basic part of what I did.

[CaptainHook]

Some of the controls in ACR can do essentially LCE, especially combining extreme settings
on fill light, recovery, vibrance, clarity, etc.

Photomatrix, lucis and such like to give you one slider that ends up doing similar things.
S/H in PS can do its own version as well. Always more than one way.

[saby]

Inspired by KR1156, here it is my 15min try

KR1156: How mutch time need and enough for U if it would be real work, as a half page ad in a magazin?

[Rhasval]

Originally Posted by KR1156

i just dont get the point of running some wild filter on the image, or adding anything...i mean aren't you trying to learn anything here? but i gotta remember theres a lot of ppl here and i'd say 9 out of 10 aren't really interested in what i am.

at lest the giants won the superbowl!!!

I don’t know if you are talking about my retouch. Anyways, I didn’t run any wild filter, just a little bit of liquefy for the flames. I did it all adding fire from others photos, here they are.
I don’t know what is wrong in adding something to an image to make it look different, beside my retouch is not only a mix of few photos. I retouched the whole faces and the eyes to get it in the scene and I tried to look like his left side (the right side for us) was burnt. May be, I did it wrong and it is a bad retouch or just you may don’t like it, and that’s ok, but I don’t think that means ppl don’t wants to learn anything, at least I’m very interesting in learning from other ppl, here in Retouchpro and I appreciate critiques of my work to try to do it better.

[kvarfordt]

Hi Im new here.
Here is my attempt.

[BMMack]

I'm going to have to try this, but, Saby, you nailed exactly what I was picturing for this shot. Care to share what you did?

[Wahl]

Hi, this is my version...

[saby]

Originally Posted by BMMack

I'm going to have to try this, but, Saby, you nailed exactly what I was picturing for this shot. Care to share what you did?

Hi BMMack,

free transform all at skew function to get the right angles of the face, than i desaturated the colors with hue/sat,sat: -10 at all, than i changed the rgb space from adobe to AIM trinitron d65g1 which has linear gamma included I did it because the right face was to dark to me, than duplicated the face to a new layer and change it to vividlight mode after this duplicate this vivid layer 3 times so i had 4 of vividlight layers
from the top:
highpass: 1 on and set the 4th layer opacity to 14%
highpass: 7 on and set the 3rd layer opacity to 12%
highpass: 14 on and set the 2nd layer opacity to 10%
highpass: 21 on and set the 1st layer opacity to 8%
these layers gave amazing of local contrast to the face even more what it needs so I put them to a new set of layers and set the opacity: 50%
than the background was selected and copied to a new layer below the set of vivids and the lens blur filter what i've used on it amount 20% but it was too much of blur so i changed the layer opacity to 70%

than I made a new set of layers and put the blurred layer and set of vivdlight layer set -the same order was kept- into my new set

a layermask applied on that new set inverted to hide all and painted with white over I wanted the effect, sadly I think it's ovredone.


if it's not clear just say it and I'll make a screenshot of it

[yelhsaneerg]

My Version (ROLL MOUSE OVER TO SEE ORIGINAL)

http://www.juicyfxstudio.com/hiresma...eandafter.html

[TrialVersion]

Hello guys,
Thank you for the photo, Pixelzombie.
Here's my try:
http://i258.photobucket.com/albums/h...allsea/man.jpg

[AltIvan]

I am almost a pro... ok maybe not, but getting close.
Critics not just welcome, required.
0% Blur

Before
After
(both links so you can see easyly the difference swithching the pages)

[CaptainHook]

Thanks pixelzombie.

D&B Retouch.

[hataproof818]

Originally Posted by CaptainHook

Thanks pixelzombie.

D&B Retouch.

Very nice work, it looks a bit colorless though, maybe that was the effect that you were trying to portray. Other than that the skin looks flawless, completely natural. Very nice work.