early attempt in fashion retouching

[pubbles]

Hi Guys!

After spending fair amount of time on tuts and practice i think i'm finally ready to start asking proffessionals for their critique

What could i do better?
I think i'm having difficulties with the pic of jumping girl with a ball in her hand (actually, the ball is composed). her legs seems so much off. maybe because of the "glow" - i think there is some lotion.. legs were also too dark at the begining. i can attach original, or close ups if it helps...

It's only test project but i would like to have an option of putting it in my "yet to be built" portfolio...

am i going the right way?


cheers
pubbles

[klev]

Re: early attempt in fashion retouching

I have to say I like your sense of color. There are details that I would probably change, but I like these overall. The things that I can see would probably be more noticeable at higher resolution. If you are showing a printed portfolio, someone detailed is likely to notice them.




Okay on the blue dress, that pleating isn't likely to look perfect. I would however massage out some of the dark spots in the nap of the fabric without further diminishing the pleating of the skirt. I don't like calling it pleating due to that typically implying that they converge as a visible feature of the garment, but whatever. You can see a dark shadow portion where it kind of bends inward from the hips. There's a convex portion, and vertical side of that is angled toward the light, emphasizing that the fabric kind of buckled there. I would ease that more into shadow, making a longer shadow from that section. I'm also not a fan of the light distracting portions of the fabric around her torso. It takes some practice to shade things like that down in a believable manner, but I might tone it down just a little. The same goes for below the neckline. There are a couple patches that are obvious subtle wrinkles, yet not prominent enough to add shape.

I was going to write more of this kind of stuff, but it gets repetitious. The area to improve is in consistency. You want to make the yellow backdrop portion hit the ground in a more consistent way. Ideally you would get her legs to feel a little more similar in lighting and tone when compared to her face and neck. The white portions of things should show more detail, and you appear to have single channel clipping/ detail loss on some of the most saturated areas of garments and things. Masking is inconsistent in sharpness in several areas. The gloves are one of the worst offenders in that regard. I would probably not allow hair to fade into the background quite so much so as to maintain the appearance of a sharp outline in those regions. Lips also look too orange against the pink dress in one of them.

I would probably remove the branding from the racket if it's just meant to be a simple prop. It feels like one. A sports brand wouldn't choose that shot because she isn't holding the racket properly. In my opinion if you're going to incorporate sports props, you should gather reference material to get an idea of how they should be held, swung, etc. Normally I would say to punch up the wrist jewelry, but in one shot it's slipping and the other it's partly occluded by the skirt.

These are just detail items. I don't know how else to explain it, but it's (in my opinion) a very strong start.

[klev]

Re: early attempt in fashion retouching

I forgot to include my original nitpick, which I think is more significant than some of them as it was immediately very obvious. You have a set of two background elements with one being perceptually white and the other being yellow. You should even out its distance from the floor to make that seam less distracting. It should still be an obvious partition between two surfaces so as not to look synthetic, but right now the gap is uneven..

[pubbles]

Re: early attempt in fashion retouching

Thank You so much klev!

You're reply is much more than i was hoping to get You're right - it's just a simple or even "cheap" test when it comes to styling, accessorizing etc. i would shoot it differently but the goal here, like always, is to make the best of that we got

removing the labels - good idea in this case, will do that
inconsistent sharpening - now i know it shows even in that small res., need to pay more attencion
orange lips - i changed color - seems that i have to do it in a more subtel way
"pleating" of the blue dress - tryied to fix that, could u have a look ?
when i was fixing that i noticed inconsistency in noise i've added to the bottom part of the dress (before pic - you can see white fabrick visible underneath dark fabrik)
hair fading into the background - i've selected them with pen path, so i had kind of sharp outline, i didn't realize they are not making the transision sharp. where do u see it the most?

when it comes to skin colors i usually do it like you've said - sample highlights, mids and shadows from face, arms and legs, see if they have any color cast, where there is more red etc. i've done it on those too, but i've probably done to many layers/changes/adjustment so that the problem with skin color and maybe those lacking details in highlights are showing, as u said. have to pay more attention or work more on a consistent workflow. i'm still doing a lot of mess in my stacks

i was going to ask you for a hint how to make backgroung more consistent - but you've just replied i knew i could work on that but didn't know the methods. thank you, i will try this way.


thank u again klev for your valuable critique.

[klev]

Re: early attempt in fashion retouching

I need to think on this, but I think you're at least going in the right direction. I don't always remove labels from things. The question you have to ask there is whether something is part of the primary focus or a simple prop. It feels like a prop here, because it isn't prominently featured. Branding is still partly obscured, and she isn't holding it correctly.

I don't leave branding on props. It feels like the legs and arm holding the racket still need to be a bit closer in skintone to the other flesh, and there are still points where the masking could use work. This is a solid start though. There are things that I still don't like such as some framing aspects aspects and the hair styling, but I stick to what can really be adjusted well in post. I can barely see it at that resolution, but it looks like the lipline could be smoothed out a bit too. I didn't know you were going to crop it that way. I'm not such a fan of that. It may have been possible to extend the wall to the left and keep the racket in the shot. You could then adjust the color of the floor to your liking while retaining the two color thing. Where I said to even it out for straightness was where the yellow wall/card meets the white cove flooring. I don't suggest you take away the seam there, but make it even all the way across.

[skoobey]

Re: early attempt in fashion retouching

Okay, first, lisetn to klev he is a great guy and helped me a lot when I was starting out (which was like a year ago lol).

First image, top of the head is too pointy. Legs are over-carved. Lighten the shadows on the legs, to make them appear more flat.

Overall impression, you're doing great, keep practicing, you're practically there. I like the color palette and the overall look very much.

Second image, almost perfect, but skin color is uneven (look at her left arm and then at her left leg for example).

I would also shade the gloves and the outfit(maybe even darks of the hair) a bit more to give it dimension.

Third image, her right leg has much more prominent highlights than the left. Adding in hair is super cool, and I like how you fixed the dress. But I would reduce it's flow at the bottom just a tad, it's a bit too wavy. And that white bit peeking through between the legs is jsust distracting.