Portrait PP Suggestions?

[OkNewbie]

I am trying to work on PP skills. I have Photoshop CS3. With the following photo, the skin has been smoothed using noise reduction and history restored to eyes, mouth and teeth, eyes lightened a little, iris darked a little. Color bumped up a little using curves. Not sure what al PP is expected or should be done...any feed back to help me out would be appreciated.

Details:

ISO 100
f 2.8
1/100
flash fired (580 EXII bounced from white card)
Canon 24-70L

[SusanH1970]

The PP looks way overdone to me. Too much skin smoothing and she's got "alien eyes". Something looks funny about her hair - she's a young girl, but she looks like she has grey hair.

Would you mind posting a SOOC? If you'd like, I could do a clean edit on it and explain how I did it.

Pretty girl and the focus looks really good. Don't be disheartened, when I first started out I had a tendency to overdo it, too.

[RLucas]

Originally Posted by OkNewbie

I am trying to work on PP skills. I have Photoshop CS3. With the following photo, the skin has been smoothed using noise reduction and history restored to eyes, mouth and teeth, eyes lightened a little, iris darked a little. Color bumped up a little using curves. Not sure what al PP is expected or should be done...any feed back to help me out would be appreciated.

Details:

ISO 100
f 2.8
1/100
flash fired (580 EXII bounced from white card)
Canon 24-70L

I would like to see the original. The overall effect is nice. I am not too sure about the skin smoothing, or if it even needed any. The big thing for me in this image anyway is her neckline, and upper chest. It is getting in to the white range a little too far. This can be a distraction. When you edit portraits, the easiest advice I can give is, that you want the attention to be drawn to the eyes. Anything that is brighter than the eyes will lead the viewers attention astray.

[OkNewbie]

Here is the photo SOOC...just sized down for forum rules. RLucas...I would agree, her skin is very good and probably shouldnt have smoothed. I really appreciate the comments and any help/pointers you could give me. Thanks

[SusanH1970]

That doesn't look like the SOOC - looks like the edit again, it looks exactly the same (same file name, too - did you accidentally save over the SOOC?). Can you try again? Thanks.

[OkNewbie]

No, I never work from my download files. I always copy them to another folder for anything that I do...that way I always have source. The changes between source and edited were not great. So, here is another try. The only thing I have done to the file is to resize it in Faststone

[OkNewbie]

This pic is the next photo SOOC....only been resized in Faststone

[YourWorldPhotography]

The only thing i can say is that the face is too dark. Tone it down some and i think you'll have it. You've got good focus on the eye and nice catch lights there also...her face just looks like its been dipped in mud and is too different from the neck and chest line to look natural. Just my honest opinion though

[miyukisarah]

Here is my edit.

- adjusted the levels
- dodged and burned the eyes to make them pop a little more
- burned the highlights in the hair to try and take away the gray look
- dodged her face and neck skin color to match her chest
- burned eyebrows and eye make up to make her eyes pop more

[OkNewbie]

Thanks guys...I really appreciate the comments. i think it is just really dark makeup???