My Son before/after

[debbiefitz]

After years of retouching images for advertising, I'm just now experimenting with some of the techniques for popping the eyes/skin tones etc that I've seen other photographers do. I've always retouched commercially never personally, so please any critiques are appreciated.


I almost forgot to say what I did...
Sponge tool to increase saturation on the eyes (set at 50%)
Dodge on eyes (hightlights 30%)
Brighten/Contrast adjustment layer
Levels adjustment layer
smoothed out color on skintone (underneath adjustment layers)

[Exposures]

I really like that. It is dramatic without being overdone. I'm far from an expert, but to me it looks great!

[BigFuzzy]

Who knows if I'd say this if I only saw the "after" image.. but to be honest, the eyes feel a bit overworked. The white seems a bit too white. The rest of the colors are clearly better than the before, and the colored part of the eyes looks nice, just the white part that's off a bit in my humble, no PS-pro opinion.

[TheDarkReaver]

If you were going for the Twilight look then spot on, otherwise it's a bit unnatural. The eyes don't look quite real and the skin looks like it's been heavily make-upped.

I'd personally dial it back a little in regards to the eyes and the skin adjustments.

[i speak in math]

The original looks about 2 stops underexposed. I would tweak that in the raw file and start from there. As other said, the eyes are waaay overdone. The skin looks like plastic.

The key is to fix things subtly. You should have people asking whether it was photoshopped at all.

[jaeros]

Good job. I love it.

[jaeros]

Originally Posted by BigFuzzy

Who knows if I'd say this if I only saw the "after" image.. but to be honest, the eyes feel a bit overworked. The white seems a bit too white. The rest of the colors are clearly better than the before, and the colored part of the eyes looks nice, just the white part that's off a bit in my humble, no PS-pro opinion.

You know i see what you are talking about. I had to look at it again.

[sedetweiler]

I normally dodge the eyes at 12% and saturate at 11%, so I immediatly feel your settings are way to much.

moreover the catchlight in the eyes is less than thrilling,so I would probably remove them and add my own. the brightness of the eyes comes from the catchlight and the opposite "moon", which is missing in this image due to the oversaturation and brighness. the moon is where the iris is illuminated opposite the catchlight. because you have a catchlight on the far left, the moon would not be helpful. the eyes look wrong because you have illuminated the iris *under* the catchlight, which is not really possible.