Critique my retouching please

[ItsOscar]

Obviously, I'm a beginner and still learning. I shot and attempted to retouch this photo. Any tips, comments and constructive criticism would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

http://itsoscar.com/?p=21

[Boneappetit]

Hi Oscar: This requirement has a long story in this forum. Short answer; you should search under Dodge & Burn threads where you can find lots of info, on the correct way to retouch. My two cents here: Avoid the use of blur when retouching, it damages the skin texture, and avoid the red(ish) shadows on the skin. The result in retouches should look natural. Since the Dodge & Burn technique takes a while to learn and it is very very time consuming, my advise is, you should start trying the degrunge technique which is very simple and have fair results. The link: http://retouchpro.com/tutorials/?m=show&id=213 Scroll down the page to see the express way.

Regards

[ysbryd]

This is probably a matter of personal preference but I really have a thing about people over-retouching the lower eyelid. While trying to remove lines here you end up removing the lid altogether and it starts to look really unnatural. I'd say go much easier in this area and minimize rather than removing. It looks like you may have done a lot of dodging and burning here, and that risks oversaturating the skin. I'd have another masked out layer for vibrance, with the vib down quite far and then paint with white on the mask at a really low opacity to tone down the colour a bit.
I'd also make the eye-whites and teeth less bright. It's got kind of a glamour look now so maybe that's what you were after, but with those areas less is more imo, otherwise they look kind of neon and OTT.

[ItsOscar]

Thanks for the replies. I'm working on another version of this same photo tonight. Thanks for the video link Boneappetit.