Thoughts on this PP?

[JPayne]

What do you lot think about this following picture? I have been working on my processing lately and wondered if you think this is too much or just right?

http://www.jpayne.co.uk/images/random/half.jpg

[DoOb's]

Good work..but there are some things on the retouch side that still need work edging around her jaw line all the way up to her left ear. And then also where her sculp the tone of the retouch to the skin is off.

Good work...but i find the retouch colour of her skin has a little too much red in it.

[locky]

Lets see the whole picture after you were done. It looks good so far.

[atomware]

Looks great - well past my level of expertise (except the jaw line is noticeably unfinished).

Question - where and how does one go about learning the techniques to edit for this kind of end result?

[richardyoung]

I love the retouching..

[XpLoiT]

looks good will be interesting to see how you handle the shaddow side seing the ligh was on that side

[JPayne]

Lets see the whole picture after you were done. It looks good so far.

Unfortunatley I never saved the PSD file and only have that JPG as a half an half. Here is the version that included the whole head retouched but I agree about the chin and side of the face, the actual shot includes her body etc so isn't noticeable once the full frame is shown.

However, when I retouch like this, it looks good at 100% but once resized it can look a bit blotchy as the details are pushed together. I think skin tones need to be made more even (dodge and burn?) but I haven't had a go at that sort of thing yet.

http://www.jpayne.co.uk/images/random/half2.jpg

[S.Horton]

Increase red saturation in the corner of her eye

Blur (or don't sharpen so much) the eye lashes

Enhance the black in the iris

If you're looking for perfect skin, then you have that.

Pretty model, too.

[JPayne]

Increase red saturation in the corner of her eye

Blur (or don't sharpen so much) the eye lashes

Enhance the black in the iris

If you're looking for perfect skin, then you have that.

Pretty model, too.

Very helpful. I will have another go from scratch at perfecting this at some point.

[S.Horton]

...you can just add those retouches to what you've done.

BTW, that's just advice from someone who read a ton of books and does some retouching, so it is worth exactly what you paid to get it. (lol)

Nice work.

[doidinho]

Get rid of the blur layer; just throw it away and don't look back.

[Triptoph]

I liked your original edit. But if you do go for some of the suggestions here, it would be interesting to see a comparison with your edit to the new edit!

[JPayne]

Ok, done another go at this. There is more detail on the full size version but I'm happy. The jagged edge around the chin and the darker part on the right was on the original pic. The pic itself is awful but gave a good ground to work on.

Thoughts?
http://www.jpayne.co.uk/images/random/skincomp.jpg

[mmahoney]

Needs a bit more texture (or less blurring).
And some contouring.

[MDJAK]

looks good to me. Kinda of like what I do with the touch of a mouse click and Imagenomics.

mark

[JPayne]

looks good to me. Kinda of like what I do with the touch of a mouse click and Imagenomics.

mark


Well, I wish I'd downloaded a trail for that before. Seems awesome! I'd still spend time enhancing other areas but for skin it does a great job. :cool:

[Johnny V]

Skin is too smooth. Is the retouched skin on a separate layer where you can change the opacity of the layer to blend back a little of the untouched skin?

[JPayne]

Skin is too smooth. Is the retouched skin on a separate layer where you can change the opacity of the layer to blend back a little of the untouched skin?

Sure is, I just knocked it back another 15% and it looked much better. The smoother version looked good at 100% but when you resize you lose detail so I think I should adjust the opacity after resizing in future perhaps.

[AxxisPhoto]

looks good to me. Kinda of like what I do with the touch of a mouse click and Imagenomics.

mark

+1 I run out of patience when it comes to post-processing.:oops: Great work btw.

[LostShootingStar]

Looks great - well past my level of expertise (except the jaw line is noticeably unfinished).

Question - where and how does one go about learning the techniques to edit for this kind of end result?

Couldn't have said it better myself http://stats.fm/uploads/G/w.gifhttp://stats.fm/uploads/B/P.gif

[KholdStare]

I know nothing about retouching and am a n00b, but to me it's hard to tell the nose apart from
the face on the lit side. The blur smoothed out the highlight on the nose between the eyes,
and also the darker area to its right- makes the nose look wider. Perhaps doing a tiny bit
of dodge and burn or revealing more of the untouched skin in those areas would help?
Take this with a grain of salt :p

Looks fantastic though :D

[elbirth]

Pretty decent result overall, although it seems that the left side (her right, in shadow) wasn't shown the same level of detailed editing.

I'd also be interested in knowing if anyone has a tutorial or something that works through this type of processing. I see this every once in a while and I find it intriguing since the skin still has pores, even after heavy post processing.

[BlindGuyTakingPictures]

Am curious to know if photoshop was used to do all the work manually or was the image run through another software for the majority of work and photoshop for the final touches?

[JPayne]

Am curious to know if photoshop was used to do all the work manually or was the image run through another software for the majority of work and photoshop for the final touches?

The entire work was done manually in photoshop. I have since purchased portraiture which does a decent job much faster but still not quite the same result as manual.

Pretty decent result overall, although it seems that the left side (her right, in shadow) wasn't shown the same level of detailed editing.

I'd also be interested in knowing if anyone has a tutorial or something that works through this type of processing. I see this every once in a while and I find it intriguing since the skin still has pores, even after heavy post processing.

The side in shadow was done at the same time as the right side - I just added the original over the final image to show a half and half. The trick to keeping pore details is to duplicate the skin layer, then run a high pass over it where you can just see skin details and then add it to the smoothed layer with a soft light blend mode. You can then change the opacity of the smoothed later until you get the desired look.