Hi all, I've been working on touching up photos. I did this one today and it is my first serious attempt at it. The picture was taken months ago and my daughter was getting over a breakout of hives at the time. Nothing special about the lighting I was holding a flash in my left hand and shooting with my right. ISO 100, f2.8, 1/250, 70mm. Any advice, tips and comments are appreciated. Thanks

Before



After

First off let me say that your daughter is very pretty and her beauty can be seen even with the breakout on the original image.

As for the touchups, there are areas that look really nice though slightly overdone for my taste and there are areas like the shaded area under her chin and neck that loose too much definition. Another mention should be the whites of her eyes, I see this done so many times where they are just too white to be realistic.
That being said I think this is a good first attempt at such a task.
May I ask how much work you put into this time wise?

Yea I probably looked at it it to long. The whites are a little white and that may have happened when I sharpened and adjusted for the web. I must have spent 2.5 hrs or so on it and a lot of that was spent on the shadow on her left ear and the shadow on the left side of her nose. As I look at the after picture here I can also see blotchy purple areas surrounding the shadow areas on the fence behind her. I printed this picture out on my $29 cannon Pixma and it was not at all terrible. I would like to see a bit more detail in her skin however and a bit less white in her eyes.

Thanks for looking reyvee61 and for your helpful input. Maybe next time I step away overnight to rest my eyes and have a fresher look

I agree with Rey. It's not at all a bad attempt for a 1st try. I've seen a hellava lot worse to be honest. BUT... that's a long freaking time to spend on one photo. I would highly recommend you check out Imagenomics Portraiture plugin for LR and Photoshop. It's an amazing piece of software and well worth the price if you do a lot of portrait work. Makes skin smoothing quick and easy with top notch results. Will make skin smoothing a 1-2 minute deal and that's if the presets don't work, which most often they do. The only thing I've noticed about it is that the photo you run through it has to be sharp and well exposed. If not, it adds a weird texture to skin that just doesn't look real.

I think there is a trial version that you can download for free. You may want to check it out. I'd also be happy to run your original through Portraiture and post the results so you can compare.

I think it's a great effort. A great learning curve on how far the software will go. She reminds me of a younger version of my daughter. I'm looking forward to more of you're work.

@AC, I didn't know that plugin was also for LR, hmmm.

Thanks anonymouscuban I sent you an email and feel free to post your results.

Thanks novicesnapper, some real kind comments and your daughter must be beautiful as well.

u did a good job

Lol, yep, three kids later, and some years of wisdom for her, but she's still my baby.

Great daughter, If you did the work in layers back off the opacity or fill layers for a more natural blend. Ditto on http://imagenomic.com/pt.aspx
Well worth the money.

I subscribe to Zoomer's philosophy in processing (as you get better), If you have to spend morr than 10 minutes correcting stuff..forget it. 2.5 hours is just waaaaaay too much time... the results will likely be (and is in your case) "over processed". I do like the hair though!