Went to Kelby's class on Friday, re-edited some old photos (very mild NWS)

These were lit with my fluorescent continuous softboxes, against white seamless backdrop. My lighting skills have improved since then, but I'm still quite the novice at Photoshop.

I went to the Scott Kelby Light it-Shoot it-Retouch it LIVE! training in Orlando on Friday. I picked up some pretty good tips on quickly editing a variety of portrait styles. I took some of the editing techniques from that class, and applied them to these photos from several months ago.

Constructive advice is welcomed, especially regarding the processing.

1. Buttercup Sunset. Only some basic edits on this one - a bit of blemish removal (her skin is fantastic but she had some clumps of glitter here and there), cleaned up the eyebrows, some levels adjustment on the eyes and lips, very low-opacity skin smoothing, and a curves adjustment layer to brighten the background (was previously dull light-gray since the continuous lights couldn't blow it out). I should have done a little Liquify to clean up that odd curve on her upper arm. Also tried a new sharpening techniquethat Kelby recommended, sharpening the red channel only - not really happy with the results, so I suppose I'm not doing it right. You can see a few red artifacts from the sharpening, especially in her eyelashes.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/6​019457525/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/6​020010170/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/6​020013412/

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/nathancarter/6​019463197/

U can't beat Kelby's class. I'm very much a newbie and foumd his class that you went too a big help.Pic's look great. I might have removed the face jewelry. I'm not opposed to it normally, but in your shoots it takes away from your work in my opinion, but lke I said I'm a newbie

Lovely images.

David

Nice shots. I took the same Kelby seminar in Toronto about a month ago and also went home and very effectively applied many of his techniques. The seminar was well worth the money. One suggestion: I think a little more skin smoothing on #2 and #3 would help, but not so much as to remove all texture.

Thanks for the comments, Hugh.

I agree that I could do a little better with the skin smoothing; however, I'm using the technique from the class: a Gaussian blur layer, masked to only reveal the areas of skin, then reducing the opacity. With the opacity any higher than about 20%, it starts to look plasticky and fake, and I definitely don't want that - I'd rather err on the side of too much texture, than on the side of too much Photoshop.

On my Flickr page, in the "Moxie" set there are some others from the shoot using only Lightroom edits, where I smoothed the skin by simply decreasing the Clarity slider. That didn't work so well, but it'll give you an idea of what they looked like before any Photoshop.

There's a Youtube video, "the perfect lie" (I think) that shows a different skin smoothing technique, though last time I watched the video, I couldn't really follow it due to my inexperience with Photoshop. I'm gonna have to give it another look, and see what else I can do.

I like Kelby's masked Gaussian blur layer technique, which I too learned at the seminar. My guess is that increasing the opacity from 20% to about 25% might just do the trick. Alternatively, you might play a little bit with the pixel range on the Gaussian Blur. As I recall, Kelby used something like 20-30, which I first thought would be too much, but actually did quite well on the photos I tried (also shot with a 60D). In your case, perhaps something smaller like 10 with a slightly higher opacity would do a better job. Just a thought. I certainly like the photos.