Taryn

[SoulfulRecover]

Did some photos with this lovely lady over the weekend and wanted your opinions on the retouching. Ive only had time to get to this one photo but Ive been trying some new techniques and Im trying to make sure nothing looks over done.

 

[Gary A.]

On my monitor, the highlights are too high and the skin color seems off and too pale and a bit on the yellow. My eye is drawn to the brightness of her dress (lower right), the rose (upper right) and her lower cheek/chin, when they should be focused on her eyes.

 

[SoulfulRecover]

On my monitor, the highlights are too high and the skin color seems off and too pale and a bit on the yellow. My eye is drawn to the brightness of her dress (lower right), the rose (upper right) and her lower cheek/chin, when they should be focused on her eyes.

Do you have your monitor calibrated? I wonder if mines off

 

[Gary A.]

The color actually looks better on Flickr than here.

 

[SoulfulRecover]

Strange. I used a grey card and just went with the middle grey. She is naturally fair skinned too.

 

[DanOstergren]

Looks very natural. I would maybe do some dodging to blend in some of the dark spots on the left side of her mouth (her right side). The only reason I suggest blending in spots like this is because sometimes I feel like they give the skin a dirty look, and I tend to prefer cleaner looking skin. I would also clean up the hair a bit but that's based on preference as well; her hair looks healthy either way so it could really go either way. It annoys me so much when there are so many flyaways and split ends that it just makes the hair look dirty and unhealthy. You could also get away with reducing the exposure a bit, and I believe this will bring a little bit more structure to her face in doing so. Otherwise this looks very good to me, as if there was no retouching to begin with (which is the goal for good retouching in my opinion).

 

[SoulfulRecover]

That dark area was bothering me and I wasn't sure if it was just me or not. Ill give dodging a try. Im guessing set it for the shadows and something low like ~15 and give it multiple passes till it blends?

Ill have to find some tutorials on touching up flyaways as well. I did about what I could before it was giving me trouble and looking very obvious.

Don't think ill have time tonight to edit but tomorrow I should

 

[DanOstergren]

That dark area was bothering me and I wasn't sure if it was just me or not. Ill give dodging a try. Im guessing set it for the shadows and something low like ~15 and give it multiple passes till it blends?

Ill have to find some tutorials on touching up flyaways as well. I did about what I could before it was giving me trouble and looking very obvious.

Don't think ill have time tonight to edit but tomorrow I should

Most of the time I have my dodge range set to "midtones", unless I'm working in very dark areas of the photo, in which case I would likely set it to "shadows. I usually have my exposure set to 4% and do a few strokes to start blending the skin until it looks good. I do all of my dodging on a separate gray layer set to "soft light" blending mode, with a soft-light 50% neutral gray fill. Are you using a pen tablet?

 

[SoulfulRecover]

Yes, a Wacom

 

[DanOstergren]

Yes, a Wacom

Awesome. Whenever someone asks me for advice with retouching, the first thing I tell them is that they need to get a pen tablet. It's as important to me as the camera lens, and I wish I would have bought one much sooner than I did.

 

[SoulfulRecover]

Yes, a Wacom

Awesome. Whenever someone asks me for advice with retouching, the first thing I tell them is that they need to get a pen tablet. It's as important to me as the camera lens, and I wish I would have bought one much sooner than I did.

Ill never go back to using a mouse. I was suppose to be a tester for this: Dell introduces its competitor for Microsoft's Surface Studio

but the guy hasn't followed through

 

[DanOstergren]

Yes, a Wacom

Awesome. Whenever someone asks me for advice with retouching, the first thing I tell them is that they need to get a pen tablet. It's as important to me as the camera lens, and I wish I would have bought one much sooner than I did.

Ill never go back to using a mouse. I was suppose to be a tester for this: Dell introduces its competitor for Microsoft's Surface Studio

but the guy hasn't followed through

Thats pretty cool. I would love to be able to test out things like that. I need to get a move on making a youtube channel for retouching.

 

[SoulfulRecover]

Yes, a Wacom

Awesome. Whenever someone asks me for advice with retouching, the first thing I tell them is that they need to get a pen tablet. It's as important to me as the camera lens, and I wish I would have bought one much sooner than I did.

Ill never go back to using a mouse. I was suppose to be a tester for this: Dell introduces its competitor for Microsoft's Surface Studio

but the guy hasn't followed through

Thats pretty cool. I would love to be able to test out things like that. I need to get a move on making a youtube channel for retouching.

You should! Im sure there are a ton of people who would love to learn how to edit from you

 

[DandL]

Yes, a Wacom

Awesome. Whenever someone asks me for advice with retouching, the first thing I tell them is that they need to get a pen tablet. It's as important to me as the camera lens, and I wish I would have bought one much sooner than I did.

Ill never go back to using a mouse. I was suppose to be a tester for this: Dell introduces its competitor for Microsoft's Surface Studio

but the guy hasn't followed through

... I need to get a move on making a youtube channel for retouching.

I'll subscribe! I've always admired your lighting and retouching skills, especially the way you do skin. It's among the best I've seen.

Sorry SoulfulRecover, I'm not trying to hijack your thread.

 

[SoulfulRecover]

Yes, a Wacom

Awesome. Whenever someone asks me for advice with retouching, the first thing I tell them is that they need to get a pen tablet. It's as important to me as the camera lens, and I wish I would have bought one much sooner than I did.

Ill never go back to using a mouse. I was suppose to be a tester for this: Dell introduces its competitor for Microsoft's Surface Studio

but the guy hasn't followed through

... I need to get a move on making a youtube channel for retouching.

I'll subscribe! I've always admired your lighting and retouching skills, especially the way you do skin. It's among the best I've seen.

Sorry SoulfulRecover, I'm not trying to hijack your thread.

I don't mind one bit