Portrait edit

[Seba]

First, Hi everyone, just registered. Just wanted to share this simple portrait with you, and would like to hear some comments on post-processing

Original:


What I did:
removed major blemishes from skin, bad skin, uneccesary pores etc.
removed earring ( i know i could've done that before the shoot but... )
removed flying hair next to the ear
removed button on the jacket, it was too distracting
enhanced eyes, color, contrast, whiteness...
added some eyelashes
thinned her eyebrow just a bit
brighten up lips
filled her hair ( that could have been done better )
sharpen
plugin portraiture for skin, because i'm not really good at skin retouching

and that's about it, i have another version in bw, converted using silver efex pro, didn't wanted to post that, but if you want i can. Hope you like it

[doubleconvex]

While the idea was good, there are a couple of technical issues - the primary one being the amount of white void that you have on the top left corner which draws the viewer's eye - not the greatest place for void space.

In terms of photo editing, you have done well with smoothing the skin out without making the image look artificial.

I would also consider reviewing the pose of the model. The somewhat downward tilt of her head without fill in lighting isn't very flattering for her. Just my two cents worth.

[PROFusioNZ]

Love what you did with the eyes. Great post work!

[Seba]

@doubleconvex - i am aware of bad composition, didn't planned the shot too much ( it's obvious because of the earring ). And the tilt isn't as big problem as focal lenght - 18mm. Her face looks weird, shoul've done that with 50mm+. Thanks anyway

@PROFusioNZ - not much job with the eyes, dodge tool, picked highlits on 30 or 40% opacity, and than the same with shadows to bring out details in her pupil and color thingy in the eye ( my english, sry ) I'm glad you like it

[zona5101]

nice work. althought there is a noticable artifact left behind from cloning the hair around her ear - thats too bad the rest looks pretty good.

[BigFuzzy]

Originally Posted by PROFusioNZ

Love what you did with the eyes. Great post work!

This is what's fun about photography, differing opinions.
I really dislike the eyes.. to me, they come across as way over-cooked in PP. When a 'touch-up' becomes an element of the photo as opposed to simply enhancing it, then I think it's gone too far. I say this because the light level of the eyes doesn't match anything else on the subject. They need to have a similar lighting level for it to not look over done.

You did a good job removing the earring though with the hair around the ear (and the grassy area especially) it's noticeable.

In the end, it was a good practice session but for me the PP work is too obvious. All this type of work, in my opinion, only works well when the whole photo is done in a way that allows you to take advantage of what can be done in PP. By this I mean that it's much more difficult to properly PP a snapshot in a non-controlled lighting environment than it is to do this type of PP on a shot that was done with thought out lighting conditions. That's why, in my opinion the PP stands out as artificial and overdone.

Still, good crack at it.. keep doing and sharing!

[Seba]

@BigFuzzy - i agree with you... when i look at the picture now i see the eyes are too processed. Next time i'll cut it down a little bit. thank you

@zona5101 - could've done better job there i know.. still, thanks

[klam]

You did a well job I must say. It seems like you rushed the job and didn't take the time to fix some problem areas that are very obvious that others have mentioned.

Try to avoid repeating patterns when cloning like in the hair and the jacket collar. The area where you removed the button, the threading doesn't line up anymore.

Retouching hair is more difficult than retouching skin and you did well. A tip would be to graft hair from a different source(picture) with the same lightining conditions and same person would be recommened to get the hair to match. But sometimes you dont have other sources and work with what you have.

No one is good at skin retouching when they start, it takes practise. When I started doing skin retouching it was all about using blurs to smooth and took me maybe 20 min to complete. Now if I do decent beauty retouch it can take me up to 4-5 hours just for the facial skin. A lot of people don't have the time and/or patience to do these type of pixel level editing and I can understand why plugins are so popular.

Keep practising and learning new techniques if retouching is one of your priorities. I think you are off to a good start. I must give you huge credit for not making the skin look plastic or blured. I'm very guilty of the doing the plastic look in the past =P

[Seba]

thanks klam for comment... I simply don't have that much patience to spend a few hours only on skin retouch so i grabbed a plugin. Whole this edit took me about half an hour, maybe 40 min.

And for plastic skin - this is the first one to look okay, learnin on mistakes is my moto, and mistakes were pretty bad