Examples of bad retouching

[Doug Nelson]

I thought this would be particularly useful to visually-oriented folk such as ourselves.

Use this thread to post examples of (your own) retouching flubs. They can be real-world, or created for this thread. Make sure you identify what, in your opinion, is bad about it.

We can make a visual catalog of what to watch out for.

Possible ideas: sloppy masking, opaque coloring, oversharpening, clone tracks, blown out highlights or shadows, etc.

Make sure it's your own work you post, so we don't make anyone feel bad. Even better would be to post the correction as well.

[Ed_L]

Come on Doug! Surely you don't think anyone from this site would do sloppy work. Okay, I'll see if I still have anything that I didn't delete. Seriously, this could be a good learning tool. Good idea.

Ed

[Mike Needham]

Holey-Moley - stand back fopr a deluge

[Guest]

Here's one that I failed on. Some of you know that I have a propensity for beautiful women in my work. On this one, I was asked to fix the hair and remove a few zits, and generally make her look ready for the prom.

[Guest]

Big Smile by Fugitive

I see what you mean, Fugitive. She looks like she's wearing a plastic wig! I guess you later matched the blurriness to include the hair. One way to avoid overblurring faces is to lasso the eyes/brows/mouth and blur the edges of your selection then invert the selection. Then you can safely work on just the skin areas and won't lose any sharpness in those important features.

I destroy (save over) all my bad efforts as I go, so I have none at the moment to share, but perhaps I can keep some intermediates that look okay one day, then I see the flaws with fresh (awake?) eyes the next day. Takes guts though to post our goofs for all to see! This exercise will separate the men from the boys I guess!

Phyllis

[Ed_L]

Greg,

It appears that you've tried to repaint the image. If you use color blending mode, it should not appear so opaque, and you'll probably be happier with it.

Ed

[Guest]

are you serious? We'll see.
this is the final.

[DJ Dubovsky]

Greg,
You need to warn someone when you do something like that. I damn near fell out of my chair laughing when Trips image came up. I don't know what I was expecting but I know it wasn't that. Oh that belongs in Chuckle for the Day. I sure had mine.
DJ

[Ed_L]

Okay, you win Greg.

Ed

[Ed_L]

Here's one of my earlier attempts. I almost completely lost the detail in the clothes, I think the highlights in the boy's face are too light (thereby making it look flat), and the wall is too "new" to go with the rest of the image. What other faults do you see? There are more.

Ed

[Guest]

DJ: One of the things I try to do is shock or make folks laugh. I'm so glad it worked. Over on alt.binaries.comp-graphics, a news group, I do this all the time, and post something there, almost every day. It's where we post pics for the PSP news group.

Ed: I notice that both have grown longer right arms.

[winwintoo]

That was a tough one Ed and you did a good job with it. Airbrush a bit of shading in around the lapels of each guy's suit and that will help. Add some light clouds to the wall and apply a gaussian blur to it and that would help to age it a bit.

It must have taken you hours - I just played with it for a few minutes and I could sense what you must have had to do.

Take care,
Margaret