Retouch this Picture to your hearts content

[aartist]

MiningArt, loved the song.
You've done lots of great work in this one thread alone.

[MiningArt]

Thanks aartist, when I saw Lyle's ice gal the song pop in my head.

[lkroll]

Don't like reading John, but did a quick browse of the poem you posted after I saw your response to aartist. lol

[MiningArt]

Worked on the lips, her right eye and neck hair removal.

[MiningArt]

This is the original and my last version. Here I just backed off on the color and muted the hat a little. This has been a good learning exercise and my first attempt at retouching something. I can see where you get down to adjusting individual pixels to make fine changes. Thanks 204studios for making this image available to practice on.
--------
Of those posting I like leuallen, Larry's version the most.

[LKB]

Great Pic .. took a try at editing it

[leuallen]

MiningArt - John

Thanks for the complement.

I did this as practice after watching the Amy Dresser live broadcast. It was a departure from the way I normally work.

Many pixels were harmed in the the creation of this image - I worked with the dodge, burn, sponge, and stamp tools directly on a copy of the image to smooth the skin.

I used curves and Hue/Sat layers with masks to even out the skin tones. This really seems to make a difference. I was suprised to see how may layers Amy uses for this process. I used 14 little patches, many more than I had ever used before.

I used a softlight layer layer to bring out highlights and deepen shadows after the skin work was done. This is her signature 'carve' layer. I did not use her 'sparkle white' technique or the high pass sharpening.

I darkened the neck area with a curves layer/mask and a slight darkening vignette to bring out the face more.

When I was nearly done I noticed that the lower right jaw line was too prominent so I did a copy stamp of the work up to that point and used liquify to bring in the jaw slightly. This should have been done before the other work was started and the liguified layer copied to act as a new master so that when I was done, I could dial back the opacity to taste. I can't on this image as the retouch layer is now not in register with the base layer due to the liquify step. I tend to overretouch somewhat and like to reduce the effect when finished by chaning the opacity of the retouch group. I learned my lesson from this image and will now study the image more carefully before starting and do any liquify required at the beginning of the process.

Larry

[Quantum3]

A RAW File would be more interesting. However, thanks for the generosity.

[Mihai]

Here's my shot at it. Since it's not really comissioned work I took the liberty of a minor structural change. I've included some 100% crops since there can't go much detail in a 100k file.

Mihai


740354788_uiM3M-O_1.jpg

740354788_uiM3M-O_2.jpg

740354788_uiM3M-O_done.jpg

[uretouch]

HI

I have done this image. Please have a look.

Thanks

Amarjeet

[Quantum3]

Originally Posted by uretouch

HI

I have done this image. Please have a look.

Thanks

Amarjeet

I think you forgot to attach it ^^

[Just Kit]

Hi Everyone... great site. I'm not a retoucher but I wanted to try this challenge. It was addicting!
I would LOVE it if you guys would give me hard cc. Tell me everything I did wrong and what I omitted. Now, if only I knew what size we are suppose to post... :0

[Quantum3]

Originally Posted by Just Kit

Hi Everyone... great site. I'm not a retoucher but I wanted to try this challenge. It was addicting!
I would LOVE it if you guys would give me hard cc. Tell me everything I did wrong and what I omitted. Now, if only I knew what size we are suppose to post... :0

Love your enthusiasm! Welcome to retouchPro, mate.

You can upload the picture to Flickr (the full res) and a little thumbnail here. Max allowed by the site is 100K.

Mart

[Just Kit]

Ok thank you, I hope i uploaded the images correctly.

This is the first image I ever retouched, I've only cleaned up and post processed the photos I take. It was really fun to me and I would love to get a wacom tablet to do it some more. The mouse was really tedious. What size would you guys recommend?

Here's what I did to the photo:
1.Cleaned up the blemishes and lines on her face with the healing tool.
2.removed the hair from all around her face, some with healing and some with clone tool.
3. Fixed her mouth by copying the right side and pasting to left side, then warping. Liquified to bring some of ther top lip down. (she was snarling a little lol)
4. Burned and dodged on her lips to give it some form and darken it.
5. used a curves layer to deepen contrast in her eyes. Added some light opposite catchlight.
6. Filled in eyebrows and reshaped by cloning around them. (now that was a pain!)
7. Burned and dodged her neck then darkened it a little.
8. Made her chin smaller by warping.
9. made neck smaller also.
10. sampled her skin color and did a color fill on hue blending mode and masked to even out skin tone a little. (prob not enough)
11. hue/sat layer to lighten and desat the skin a little.
12.over all burning at low opacity to try to contour her face. (not really sure how to do that though)
13. selective sharpened her eyes, mouth, nostrils and a little on her hair and hoodie.

as far as I can remember, that's it.
ETA: oh yeah, I also copied her eye lashes from her left eye and pasted onto her right eye to hide my nasty looking hair clone around that eye. lol

Please don't hold back on the criticism.. The tougher the better!





Here's the full rez.

http://www.photosbykit.com/retouchpro/full_rez.jpg

Thank you so much!!
ETA: added original thumb to compare...

[aartist]

I like what you have done.
Also, liked the great description of your retouch steps.
You put me to shame in both categories.

C O N G R A T U L A T I O N S ! ! !

[Just Kit]

Not hardly aa! Yours is gorgeous. I'd love to know how you get the skin so even. I always shoot babies and kids so they don't need much touching up.

give me some criticism will you?

[Quantum3]

Hey no problem. I have been taught by the retouchPRO's community (and not only in terms of retouching), so I feel good giving what it was gave to me

"Messy Luminosity"... It's when you have several patches of different contrast all over the skin meaning that the 'skin' needs to be more soft. The fact is that the light should be softer, not the skin, but both are chained like the heat to the fire. Will attach an example of that. The skin looks like crumpled or crumped paper (sorry my English) so you need to soft that deffect. Applyes the same for the color. At global sight/look, the color changes suddenly from an area to another, meaning you should smooth the transitions (it's very related to the same thing about luminosity, fixing this one, color also will be fixed, but it will need some tweaks as well, don't know how to explain it, but the color/luminosity jumps between areas are too big).

You can also dim a bit the shinning areas next to her nose, mouth and chin. There are many minor details such as the little red spot in her top right lip or the sudden color/luminosity change around her mouth in relation to the rest of the sorrounding skin.

Mart

forgot the "messy luminosity" example:

[Just Kit]

Quantum... boy do you have good eyes!!

Thank you so much, I now see all of that! Could you elaborate on the "messy luminosity"? Not sure what that means. Also about the unbalanced skin color. Do you mean it's not even? I will look up those tuts you gave me. I can't thank you enough.

[Just Kit]

Quantum.. I added the original to the thumnails and enlarged my thumnail so you could comapare. Thank you for that detailed explaination. I purposely didn't soften the skin, even though I do have portraiture, because I thought they did not soften for retouching.

So, it is ok to soften? I see what you mean about the shiny spots too.
Thanks again.

aartist- thank you too!

[Quantum3]

There are retouchers that like dodging and burning and others that like blurring the image. I personally do both things. I just don't find useful wasting the time dodging and burning when the same result can be achieved by applying some HP technique. I use to D&B when the HP doesn't help and viceversa, so I mix the best of each technique

[Quantum3]

I see... what you did on her chin is cool, and the same in the neck, but the mouth looks a bit like the one in La Monaliza ^^

[Just Kit]

Originally Posted by Quantum3

I see... what you did on her chin is cool, and the same in the neck, but the mouth looks a bit like the one in La Monaliza ^^

LOL! hmm, 2 out of 3.. not bad! Yeah, I was like a 4 year old trying to paste in kindergarten. heh

[Byakuya]

Here's my take on it!
Just played with curves, extensive healing brush action, some Amy Dresser typed magic...and here we go!

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2660/...7365225e_b.jpg

[Nasturtium]

Judging by the number of viewer who have gone to my flickr page from here RetouchPRO must have heaps of lurkers. :-) I wish I had the time to fix the catchlights (they are so embarrassingly bad) but I'm traveling ATM. I poured over an old Vogue magazine on the long transatlantic flight and discovered that you can pretty much tell the lighting set up from the catchlights!!!! That is so cool.

- Nancy

[secretagents]

Ok, I have done something. Removing all those hairs was sooo boring....

You can download the full retouch here if you want have a closer look.

http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.p...qlztaq&thumb=6

Criticism welcome btw

[Byakuya]

Originally Posted by secretagents

Ok, I have done something. Removing all those hairs was sooo boring....

You can download the full retouch here if you want have a closer look.

http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.p...qlztaq&thumb=6

Criticism welcome btw

Nice! Looks fresh

[Byakuya]

Here's my attachment. i didn't know how to do it properly before >_< *newbie*

[aartist]

Nasturtium has deduced you are out there, so quit hiding.
I challenge all lurkers to signup and submit their trials of this photo.
We know you are working on this photo, so submit it for others to see!

[RayGuselli]

I tried a painting........

Ray

Full size version here

http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/29/modelfullsize.jpg

[Nasturtium]

Originally Posted by aartist

Nasturtium has deduced you are out there, so quit hiding.

It's post #3. in this thread.

:-)