This is my first time trying the D+B technique.   I feel like I just stuccoed a house with a teaspoon.  That took FOREVER.  Is this really how the big kids do it?  I must have been working at way too light an opacity or too small a brush or something....  Or just obsessing over small zits that would never be seen.....

How many hours does it usually take you to retouch a middle age face neck and shoulders with this method?

Please tell me your thoughts.  How did I do?  What did I miss?  Any tips would be gratefully appreciated.



-WL

for you first time you did very good , i cant really see good because the image is small but overall it look good to me , i persoonly dont like to take all the wrinkels underneat the eyes away i think it look not so natural but is matter of tast and client, good job just keep doing it. i personly dont do that to much for free cause i dont like to wear glasses i think during daytime is ok but at nighttime it can dammage your eyes in long term but d&b is the real deal

Great analogy...

If I spend less than an hour D&B, I hear Handel's Messiah playing in my head!

(personally, I would have left the nose a little thinner - perhaps at 50% opacity of the 'Nose' layer - a compromise between the before and after)

I use multiple layers of D&B in photoshop- one for make-up, a global one, and one if I'm 'carving'...

Less than an hour? 

I am clearly doing something wrong.  It took days filling in pores, freckles and cracks.


Thank you all for the valuable tips so far.

Comparison of me. You are great
*_*

really good for the first time, but a little bit flat, some details have been cleared, you need to practice more carving techniques

When I started to learn how to retouch one of things that confused me the most was all the terms one was carving, which seems silly to me now but we all learn differently. At the end of the day it's all just d&b. I will give you the best tip and that is to keep it simple and zoom out and don't over do it but do zoom in from time to time when you want to get at some splotch/patch to take the image where the client or you wants to go. Another thing you can also do is figure out which d&b technique works best for you and appropriate brush settings that work for you also.

I like what you did and it's a great start, better than I ever did. but you went a bit too far just don't lose the shape of the face, leave that in. : )