First Go at Post Processing on skin etc... C&C welcome!

So I had a go at this photo:


I removed all of the blemishes, moles, etc, smoothed the skin, fixed the errant hair, changed the white balance, and did some other stuff... I think I like the results, but I was wondering what everyone else thought. If I missed something, let me know.

Here is the edited version:

 

Looks good to me, skin might be a bit too warm though....

 

I agree with crystalhb. It looks well done, just a little too warm for me.

 

yea i wouldnt remove moles, its part of the person, its what defines that persons face

EDIT: other than that and it being a tad too warm, looks good

 

I liked the original better, but as long as you were practicing, I'd say, yes, it's too warm. You also seemed to have lost too much sharpness.

 

personally, I never retouch my own photos... I just wanted to practice

thanks for the temp comments... I wasn't sure if I went too far on this one, but I increased the WB temp by like 2000... probably a bit much.

I tried to retain as much sharpness as I could with the skin smoothing... how do you guys smooth skin anyway? here is what I did:

1. duplicate layer
2. gaussian blur top layer
3. mask layer (have hair and eyes showing through)
4. work on masking a little more to define features (like edges of ear, nose, lips, etc)
5. smudge tool on really porous areas

it came out pretty well I thought, but maybe not?

 

i like # 1

 

I've spent the past couple of weeks watching Deke McClelland's CS3 videos on Lynda and have learned a LOT (not sure how much I've retained though). While I am still learning, and I could have this wrong... but you might try to just do a straight gaussian blur layer top like you did but blend with overlay. Other than the color temp being too warm for the entire photo, it looks pretty good to me.

I've been looking for some practice so maybe I'll give it a go when I get home from work.

 

I think it looks good, agree with the mole comment though. I find moles and freckles interesting.

 

well, I have lots of them!

 

You don't want to use Gaussian. It blurs and erases pores. Therefore making it look crappy. You want to run a high pass filter and set it to soft light to bring back some pores. Or else, you just have a delicately smudged face.