Before and After Touchup/Project

[Adamlwells408]

A touchup edit I did for my photography class.
Always looking for constructive criticism and critiques.
Just posted to see what everyone else thinks about it!

 

[ronlane]

IMHO, I think you need to lighten the shadows on her left side. (could have used fill in my opinion)

 

[Braineack]

touchups themselves look pretty good. the dead model and lighting could use work...

 

[Adamlwells408]

touchups themselves look pretty good. the dead model and lighting could use work...

Yeh i'm still a beginner so I have a lot of practice to be done with lighting and what not.
But on this one I am more focused on the touchups since it was the main part of the project for class. Thank you!

 

[Big Mike]

Yeh i'm still a beginner so I have a lot of practice to be done with lighting and what not.
But on this one I am more focused on the touchups since it was the main part of the project for class. Thank you!

Fair enough, but one of the secrets to photo editing is knowing when & where to spend your time. Part of that is being a honest with yourself (or the photographer) when going through the process of choosing which photos will be the 'keepers'. I may take some time & experience, but you should learn to recognize when a photo will be worth spending time on, and when it won't.

I agree with the previous comment, the skin work looks good, but the lighting could use work and the model's expression totally kills the shot.

I understand that practising your 'touchups' is your goal here...but it's better to learn this lesson now. Don't waste time on bad photos, life is too short for that.

If you ever plan to turn this into a job or a career...time will be equivalent to money. There are plenty of photographers who spend way too much time editing and many of them get burnt out and no longer want to be photographers. A lot of that could be solved if they just learn to pick out only the very best of the best for their editing etc. Instead, many people are afraid to throw away shots that are just OK, and so they end up editing way more photos than they need to.

Sorry, didn't mean to go on such a rant when you were only asking about your skin work. Welcome to the forum.

 

[Adamlwells408]

Yeh i'm still a beginner so I have a lot of practice to be done with lighting and what not.
But on this one I am more focused on the touchups since it was the main part of the project for class. Thank you!

Fair enough, but one of the secrets to photo editing is knowing when & where to spend your time. Part of that is being a honest with yourself (or the photographer) when going through the process of choosing which photos will be the 'keepers'. I may take some time & experience, but you should learn to recognize when a photo will be worth spending time on, and when it won't.

I agree with the previous comment, the skin work looks good, but the lighting could use work and the model's expression totally kills the shot.

I understand that practising your 'touchups' is your goal here...but it's better to learn this lesson now. Don't waste time on bad photos, life is too short for that.

If you ever plan to turn this into a job or a career...time will be equivalent to money. There are plenty of photographers who spend way too much time editing and many of them get burnt out and no longer want to be photographers. A lot of that could be solved if they just learn to pick out only the very best of the best for their editing etc. Instead, many people are afraid to throw away shots that are just OK, and so they end up editing way more photos than they need to.

Sorry, didn't mean to go on such a rant when you were only asking about your skin work. Welcome to the forum.

No, I greatly appreciate it!

 

[KmH]

View attachment 60207

I did a quick and dirty edit on top of your edits:

 

[julianliu]

I did a quick and dirty edit on top of your edits:

Keith, I understand you were trying to lighten up the dark side of her face, but it looks actually dirty to me. Lots of noise and the skin tone does not look right. Maybe raw photo will give you more room to improve the photo.

 

[480sparky]

While we're at it, let's complain about the 'sit-down-and-shut-up' pose, her hair style, choice of clothing and the bed-sheet background. :er:

 

[KmH]

Under exposure is digital photography death.
The edit is meant for illustration only to show how dark the one side of the face is, give the OP some other editing ideas.

Because of the way digital photos work there is very little image data in the dark parts of a photo.
Add the reduced bit depth and other ways JPEG compression is accomplished and one begins to understand that JPEGs aren't meant to be edited post process.

 

[412 Burgh]

KMH your edit makes her left side of the face look gray and almost dead. I understand the idea was about the touchup but why not practice lighting and directing a model as well? It's killing three birds with one stone. It's a whole lot easier to touch up a photo when it is shot correctly.

 

[DanOstergren]

For the most part the skin retouch looks great. I would make one recommendation and that is to find a technique that allows you to keep a little more detail. The way you edited the skin gives it a look that to me is a little too unreal and obviously edited.

 

[bianni]

An edit.