First retouch experience

[polyester]

Hi there. I am a long time working in Photoshop, but for the first time engaged in retouching. Please, point out mistakes and shortcomings. Be strict.

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img907/4438/ztsDQS.jpg

[lurch]

Re: First retouch experience

Overall, pretty good. Her eyes are just awful, however. One does not know how they went wrong, but they did!

[polyester]

Re: First retouch experience

lurch, thank you for your comment. Maybe it's because I tried to make ringlights glare?
What do you think about this version?

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img912/3237/sl9PcX.jpg

[klev]

Re: First retouch experience

I would start over, because the unretouched image looks significantly better.

On the final, the eyes have a ring flash look, which doesn't work at all with anything else in the image.

You did an okay job with the eyebrows and better than I've seen anyone else do on their first try.

I dislike the amount of yellow added to the overall image. The yellow teeth are bad. The shadowed parts of the hair (in the back) have too much saturation.

I would smooth the center line on the lips a bit and blend the lower lip line somewhat. Apart from that the skin details are a bit overdone. In spite of being overdone, the brighter portion on the forehead shouldn't be quite so segmented/patchy. Don't use my depiction here to fix it, because I cannot think of a good set of instructions. Look at other reference imagery.

The hair is actually quite good for your first attempt, but you made some things too obvious. There are parts on the right where a portion is obviously very bright, like she has mismatched extensions. Some of the filled portions are filled too perfectly relative to the coarseness of neighboring sections.

That's about it. Perhaps I'll return to better explain the skin part.

[polyester]

Re: First retouch experience

klev, thank you for such a detailed response.
I did not even think about some things, such as the lips.

Some of the filled portions are filled too perfectly relative to the coarseness of neighboring sections.

I do not quite understand what you mean here.
Also I wanted to ask about the nose.
I really do not like it on original image, but, seems to me, i made it even worse.
Oh, and I would really like you to come back and have explained the skin partю

[klev]

Re: First retouch experience

klev, thank you for such a detailed response.
I did not even think about some things, such as the lips.

I do not quite understand what you mean here.
Also I wanted to ask about the nose.
I really do not like it on original image, but, seems to me, i made it even worse.
Oh, and I would really like you to come back and have explained the skin partю

Oh sure. I could have been more detailed on those parts. Sometimes I'm still processing information while typing my response. I keep it rather quick with this forum rather than writing in a more iterative manner, because it doesn't cache them.

I think you found the shape of her nose unattractive, and you wanted to do "something". You lightened up the naturally occurring shadows that define the border between the nostrils and the bridge of the nose. In my opinion it's never a good idea to remove definition. You could have attempted to reshape it to something that you find more pleasing, but you would want to consult other images for reference. Otherwise you will end up with something that looks weird. I don't mind mind her real nose at all. It's atypical, and I really like that.

Really as a general rule though, if you're not sure what to do, leave it alone unless someone asks you explicitly to change it or you are positive they will find it objectionable. If it's just a source of portfolio material, don't use anything where you aren't confident in all of your decisions.

Okay so regarding the hair. Some parts look pasted in. I know hair is difficult, but you should see that in the original, it has at least some transition going from the lighter to darker portions based on the curvature relative to lighting and camera angles. The areas you patched both on the left and right side of the images have some abrupt color mismatches, and it just doesn't have any kind of transition.

That was one thing. The other thing is that you'll notice that bulges in the hair often cause subtle shadows on neighboring regions. When you past in new hair to cover discontinuities, you want to examine whether it cast any shadows (again they're subtle).

I think you could do a decent job on something like this, but you do need to try to avoid overdoing stuff. Just make the smallest change absolutely necessary to accomplish each goal without micromanaging it, e.g. don't try to limit the number of times a background pixel is affected by layers above it.

I'll give you some examples. Some of the blemishes could have been cleaned up with less in the way of changes, yet you missed at least one thing that looks like it was a blemish on the forehead. It probably wasn't bothersome at that point, yet other things were changed. On the cheek you lightened the freckling yet didn't really tone down the brightest portions. I would have adjusted that part less overall. Looking at this now, I detest the darkening of the highlights underneath the eyes, especially in the way it was done. I would have postponed a choice like that, because it's inherently problematic (partly experience, partly I have the anatomy of the face pretty well memorized).

Does that help? If not I may need to circle stuff.

It's not entirely comprehensive, as this is meant to be an overview. As I look at the details of it, I can see that you (understandably) haven't yet mastered some of the shading aspects of it. Minimizing the adjustments whenever possible will help achieve a better look, as it will be a bit more forgiving to subtle mistakes.

[polyester]

Re: First retouch experience

I am very grateful for this profound answer.
Many of these things now seem so obvious and striking.
Nevertheless, I should once again consider all written above and proceed to the next job more seriously. Also I should choose something easier. With fewer hair
Thanks again. I could not even imagine that I would get such a detailed and useful review. Now really want to learn to do better.

[skoobey]

Re: First retouch experience

Ah the good old days when I was starting out and made things like this...

-Nose. It's Caroline Trentini, everyone knows what a supermodel looks like, why change her nose, and what it is now... it looks so odd, anatomy is a miss.
-Eyes. Corners are over sharpened, yellow, and the reflections just don't look right at all.
-Hair looks blotchy here and there, drawn here and there but you added so much noise, so mistakes can only really be seen here and there.
-Skin is blotchy and looks like you applied an even-out filter.

I can sort of get what you were trying to do with the monotone color palette, but main problem here is that you didn't respect the model. But, hey practice makes perfect, my images were so bad, but you keep practicing and results will show.

[polyester]

Re: First retouch experience

My bad, I didn't even think to know about the model. Just found the photo and started to retouch. I Will keep practice. Thank you for reply.