Digital Make Over

[ryandaleySD]

Sometimes just a little is too much. Photoshop can be a powerful editing tool and if you dont do it right it looks photoshopped....which isnt a good thing. A teacher once told me, if a photo is edited through photoshop, if it is good you shouldnt be able to tell what has been done to the photo.

If I had to choose between the three posted here, I would choose the original untouched just because it looks like a natural photo and not someone over doing it with the PS tools.

[IShotTheSheriff]

Dare I say that her face wasn't in need of a makeover at all? Wasn't her skin smooth enough already?
If it were my choice I would keep the editing to a minimum. I would crop out the background, since it's dull, and focus the image more on the girl and her smile.

[Ciscley]

Originally Posted by Trader

OK, here I am again with round two...

Trader- Is there something else different about the editing on her face in this one? It looks thinner somehow, but only in comparison to the other images. If it's not my eyes playing tricks on me (possible this late at night ), can you share how you did it? I have a mother of the bride who would love me if I could make her look just a *little* slimmer than the mother of the groom.

Oh, and can you also do one more edit of this photo? I'd love to see what it looks like with a vertical crop instead of horizontal. Maybe with the right edge where her wrist bends and the left edge giving her a little bit of space to "look in to."

[Xavarion]

Some of the highlights have been done too strongly making them almost a perfect white which makes them very distracting. This is especially on the lips and the eyes. Would it be possible to upload an origonal cropped version so that otherpeople can have a go please?

[klam]

Cicsley- The models right eye isn't wierd(crazy eye's) looking like the the 1st edit.

I'm going to say I like the orginal shot also.

[ckodonne]

The second version is much, much better. The first one looked more like a painting than a portrait. If you're going for a specific artsy-type of ad I can see why this would be good, but traditional portraits should be processed minimally. Doesn't mean you can't have fun with them however...different lighting, black/white conversions, shallow DoF with intense bokeh, interesting and original environments, extreme poses...the list goes on.

I know this is a before-and-after crit but there's something bugging me about the photo. The flash seems to be too harsh and direct...you can tell by the shadow in the unprocessed version. Is there a reason for that? I generally don't like telling people what to do artistically, but since you're doing portraits with the intent, I suppose, of doing commercial work, I want to point this out. Did you try to bounce the flash or diffuse it somehow? I don't do portraits so I'm sure there's other ingenious ways to make the flash less intense...