am i right?

[r_dg]

well i retouched this picture i took myself, and the purpose was to show the work of my sister as a makeup artist, i did the D&B technique but had to degrunge the skin because the model had a lot of imperfections, a lot of open pores and blemishes so had to soften the skin.
what do you think? does it look natural? or too retouched?

[SteveB2005]

I think you did a fine job for the look you want to achieve. I might add a little more skin texture if possible, but that maybe something that doesn't show up on the low rez screen shot. It's a bit too smooth/blurred for my preference, but perhaps that is the look you were going after.You captured the cheek bones with a good shadow blend. You might also try masking the hair and put on a white background. It does have an obvious retouched look, but that can work depending on what market you are going for. Keep going!! JMHO

[Ziaphra]

I like it but the skin does look blurry...not natural at all.

[jam1212]

Really the places where you lose realism are around the mouth and nose, insides of the eye near the eyebrow, really anywhere that shadows were once involved. The degrunge method tends to smooth those out too much and make them disappear, thus removing any definition from her face. Good example: right above the upper lip. There should be more definition to that little area right below the nose. As it is now, it almost doesn't exist, which keeps us from believing the image. Try to get those shadows back and you'll be much closer.

[r_dg]

mmm something like this?
btw when i converted the image to 100kb the image lost a lot of definition

[jam1212]

That looks much better! You should, in the end, try to reduce the blur a bit in order to reduce the "plastic" look, but the shadows improved it a lot.

[r_dg]

here is the link for the hq http://img140.imageshack.us/img140/1517/dsc00369zb4.jpg