I didn't wash my face...

[Phoenix_Jackson]

... and it shows.

Since there's no willing soul for me to practice some portrait shots, I figured I'll just take a selfy. Out of the session, this is one of the best I could come up with. Although not my favorite, it's the one which I could most address my new found issues.

Focused dead center, background not helping, too much contrast, and light a little too harsh. I just realized that now. But my biggest concern was my skin. The original shows too much detail, with pores too deep and red spots 10 times more conspicuous than real life. My mission was to soften that out.

I think I'm getting better with cloning and healing. And the only 2 ways I know (so far) is to either Gaussian Blur the entire thing and just layer mask the ones I need sharpness with. Or use smudge to manually brush the skin. I used the latter with this one.

After staring too long with this image, I thought it was good. But now, I thought it was too much and unnatural. So may I ask: What other ways to smoothen skin? And if the two mentioned above are the most practical, where did I go wrong?



Of course, other nitpicks are more than welcome. I tried to get rid of catch-light but my eyes looked even more dead doing so.

Canon 60D with Samyang 85m
Aperture: f/1.4
ISO: 100
Exposure: 1/100
With Flash

Thank you for taking your time with this.

[bphilleo]

In my opinion the skin doesn't look too unnatural. If you're concerned you could always take down the smoothing a notch or so. The less you add to it the more natural it will look.

Better to have catchlights than no catchlights.

I think the side of your face (camera right) is a little too shadowed, at least for my taste.

Hope that helps!

[Phoenix_Jackson]

Thank you for the response.

The highlighted part of my forehead and left cheek (camera right) is where I mostly see the "plasticky" part. Or is it just because I know how the original actually looks like?

"Catch light is better than no catch light." Duly noted.

If I crop part of my head (maybe up to my ear) on the shadowed portion, would it still look "too shadowed?" This kind of extreme lighting is what I'm keen to learn. Or am I doing it wrong?