Recording your actions

[Ray Cooper]

Good evening [ at least in Australia ]

I am brand new to ReTouch having found the site thru Katrin Eismann's book on Photoshop Retouching. Initial viewing appears a little daunting but I'm sure I will find my way around.

Below is an image I did in Photoshop 5.0 before I had ever heard of ReTouch & I would appreciate comments on it.

Probably the most important thing I have found whilst doing projects like these is to make sure the various steps [ even if they are two steps forward, one step backwards ] used to create the final image. This I neglected to do in these cases & I doubt I would be able to recreate the same image.

[ArtistColumbus]

Welcome Ray!

I hope you come to love this site as much as the rest of us here do! This is a great group and you can learn a lot. Have you checked out the Tutorials yet? There's some great information! Also, follow along and read some of the threads in our photo-based art and retouching forums. Individuals will often post step-by-step accounts of how they got to their finished results.

As for your photo, is there an original version that you can post so that we can see the "before" compared to your "after?" It would help us in reviewing your work and making any comments. Don't worry about not knowing what steps you took to get to your final piece. All of us do that at one time or another.

Glad to have you here!

[DannyRaphael]

Hello Ray:

Let me add my welcome, too.

RE: This site is a little daunting.
Not to worry. Below my signature is a link to a site map that should make navigation a little easier.

As Jennifer said keeping track of your steps (or not) takes a little getting used to. Are you familiar with the History Palette. As long as you have it setup to record, say, 50-100 steps or so, it can be used to jog your memory on what led you to the final result.

RE: Comments on this image.
With images a lot of detail like this one, sometimes converting them to photo-art makes them look very textured and busy.

Something you might try sometime is applying the Blur > Smart Blur filter early in the process to (what's called) simplify the image a bit... that is, reduce some of the noise while retaining important edge detail.

Glad you found us and hope to see more of your creations. Ask lots of questions. We're here to help.

~DannyR~