First Major Retouch For A Friend

[JMLPictures]

My friend is the model in this picture. Her cousin is the one who took the picture and also designed the dress but she doesn't know much about retouching so they sent them to me. Here is one of them. What do you think? Again, I did NOT take this picture... just did the retouching.

Original how i received it:

My Retouched version:

What do you think? Any critiques on the retouch?

Josh

 

[DubDeez.]

I think you did an excellent job! I love how much the eyes pop out!

 

[JMLPictures]

Thanks!

josh

 

[Derrel]

I think the retouching has added too much saturation in the bodice area of the dress, and the shadows on her skin appear to have a bit of a yellow bias. THe photo appears to have been made near the golden hour in open shade, and although I have not pulled the shot into Photoshop and looked at it, it looks like a poor raw conversion. The subtle interplay in the highlights--in the background, on the rail, on her skin and in her eyes--all the subtlety in the highlights has totally been lost in the raw conversion,and the added contrast and saturation in the retouching job just compressed all the tonal values.

If the top file is the source file, I can see why the result you got does not really emphasize the beautiful light that was at the scene. I think if you eliminated all the yellow-green color cast areas the shot would look better.
But I think a different starting point from the original capture would be a good place to make your retouching efforts have more chance to really sing.

 

[clbd39]

as far as how it instantly looks, it looks very clean, however, since the dress is as important as the model (since you said they designed it) i think the additional contrast made all of the pattern and texture go away near her chest, in the original picture it seems like that is a very important piece of the clothing as well

but it does look great, but you lost some important aspects

 

[JMLPictures]

Derrel,
Thanks. One thing I was worried about was the jpg i got. She did not shoot the file in a RAW format. This one was shot JPG.

When you say eliminate all the yellow-green color cast areas are you talking about the... actually i am a little confused as to what your talking about to be honest... if you want to feel free to play with the picture to show me what your talking about... or just circle the spots your talking about.

Josh

P.S. Thanks for the critique... sorry i don't understand much of it. HAHA

 

[JMLPictures]

as far as how it instantly looks, it looks very clean, however, since the dress is as important as the model (since you said they designed it) i think the additional contrast made all of the pattern and texture go away near her chest, in the original picture it seems like that is a very important piece of the clothing as well

but it does look great, but you lost some important aspects

Thanks. I actually didn't notice that till just now. This is why i like critiques so I will know what to look for in future retouches.

Josh

 

[Derrel]

If you open the retouched file and go to AUTO COLOR in Photoshop and hit the Auto Color button, you will see the flesh tones immediately warm up quite a bit.

Alternately, if you open the retouched file and then go to Selective Color, and pull down to the reds, and subtract 9 to 13 points of Cyan, you will see the flesh tones warm up quite a bit.

Both of those approaches will show you what I meant by a bit too much yellow-green in the retouched file compared with the original unretouched .JOPG file you were given to work with. When you add a Gaussian Blur layer or screens, it's pretty common for the flesh tones to shift.

 

[kayliana]

I think it looks really good! You should try lowering the saturation to make it more pastel, vintage looking. Just a thought

 

[JMLPictures]

Thank you Derrel for that. I will play with it some more.

Josh

 

[clintd]

It looks to me that you overprocessed the skin on her face. She looks very plastic now.

 

[Josh220]

It looks to me that you overprocessed the skin on her face. She looks very plastic now.

Agreed. You need to be careful when smoothening the skin around areas such as the nose. You can easily make it look like the nose molds into the cheeks as you did here. Try to get back some of the facial features.