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: