Working on clean editing....C&C welcome!

[Lmphotos]

#1 Before SOOC
#2 After edits

 

[e.rose]

Good start

Your skin smoothing looks a little... too... blurry or something. But it's certainly a good start overall

 

[Lmphotos]

I agree I though maybe it was me looking at it too much lol

 

[pic_chick]

Think this may be a tiny bit OOF just a hair maybe the edit does look nice

 

[Lmphotos]

Think this may be a tiny bit OOF just a hair maybe the edit does look nice

I focused and recomposed at f/4 to shallow to use that method?

 

[MitchStrp]

Lm, where at in Missouri are you from? btw adorable little guy.

 

[e.rose]

I agree I though maybe it was me looking at it too much lol

That happens sometimes, haha. I've gone and done a FULL retouch way past when I should have... and then come back the next day and looked at it and said to myself, "Dude... Emily... were you DRUNK when you did this?!" and then ended up scraping it and retouching it from scratch AGAIN. :lmao: I should have listened to myself the first time I realized it was getting hard to see.

When you notice that you think you may be looking too hard or too much, it's super helpful to walk away. Do something else for like 5 - 10 minutes and give your eyes a rest. Then come back... if your first impression is *still* "it's too much"... then it's too much. If it looks okay when you come back... then you're good.

But yeah, your skin smoothing looks to me like you used a blur tool or filter on it. Did you? If so, there are better ways to skin smooth, but in all honesty, concentrate on getting your exposrues and composition and stuff correct first before diving into the crazy world of "How the hell do I skin smooth this?!", haha.

If I were you, for now, I would maybe just use the healing tool on any zits and stuff like that, but not really bother smoothing until I had the other stuff down.

But again... you're on the right track. Keep working at it! :sillysmi:

 

[e.rose]

Think this may be a tiny bit OOF just a hair maybe the edit does look nice

Think this may be a tiny bit OOF just a hair maybe the edit does look nice

I focused and recomposed at f/4 to shallow to use that method?

It's not out of focus at all. @Pic_chick, look at her original.

What you're seeing in the *edit* is her skin smoothing making it seem as though he's OOF. Her original is focused fine, but the edit just has blurry skin smoothing, giving it the illusion of being OOF.

 

[Lmphotos]

I did use a blur tool to smooth I really wanted to just get rid of the red and make it even I used a bit healing too.

 

[Lmphotos]

Lm, where at in Missouri are you from? btw adorable little guy.

Cape Girardeau about 5 or so hours away from you. Thank You I think he is pretty handsome my self

 

[e.rose]

I did use a blur tool to smooth I really wanted to just get rid of the red and make it even I used a bit healing too.

Yeah but it's not really even. It's still there... it's just blurry now. Blurry splotches rather than smooth tone.

BUT... like I said... I wouldn't worry about skin smoothing right now. Nail everything else down first. It's better not to blur the skin than to attempt to smooth it via blurring cause all you're accomplishing as previously noted, is that you end up giving the illusion that the image is OOF. Which is no bueno. :sillysmi:

 

[pic_chick]

Ahh thanks for clearing that up I did not know retouch could do that now I have a few I need to go back and give a relook

 

[Benco]

I agree I though maybe it was me looking at it too much lol

I that happens a lot with paintings too, it's a problem with any image you're working hard on for long periods of time. An old trick is to turn the painting upside down or to look at it in a mirror (I prefer to take a photo of it and flip or rotate on the computer), it gives you a fresh perspective and you can spot problems straight away.

 

[KmH]

#2 After edits View attachment 34317

The original is badly under exposed. The lighting is straight on, robbing the image of a lot of depth (minimal shadows on the facial mask). The green background is to vibrant and is competing with the child for the viewers attention, particularly with a crop that leaves so much of the vibrant green background in the edited/cropped image.

Ideally, you want skin highlights (cheeks, tip of nose, chin, etc) to be at 235 to 240 in the Red color channel.

In ACR 6 added an additional 0.7 EV of exposure to your edit. I set the Blacks slider to +5 and the Clarity slider to +30, and in the Sharpening panel set the the Amount to +25 with a Radius 1.0
In CS 5 I used the Sharpening tool set to Protect Detail, and 70% opacity. I locally sharpened the forehead hair line, eyes, nose, and mouth. I cropped and added a thin black border.