Marin Photography wrote:
The color of the model's eye make up is in the whites of her eyes. I am guessing that's a mistake. Looks like you added contrast causing you to lose details in the eyes it all looks like it's meshed together now. The darker tone makes the hair disappear and now it looks like she has a block head. I would crop it tighter and lose some of the dead space and hair. I would also get rid of that thing sticking out in the inside of her nose. Both nostrils need fixing. That's not attractive.

Thanks for the input!

The makeups not in the eyes, but I did use a filter over them (as well as D&B) I noticed they looked a bit odd but I wasn't sure what I could do to correct it. Without the filter the eyes look matte grey, now I think they may be too bright. I agree to maybe let up on the contrast of the eyes.

That's her septum piercing lol, I hadn't even payed any mind to it, thanks for pointing it out!

Marin Photography wrote:
That's a lot better! The issue still is the eyes. Maybe it was a bad image to start with being too small/not well lit.  A bad image is a bad image there is no fix.  Anyway, you really gotta pay attention to details. These folks here will tear away at you if you are sloppy.

Thanks!
I know they are still.. odd.

In all honestly, the image goes all the way to the calves of the model; zooming in to retouch the face it gets very blocky. I liked it for a retouch though to boost makeup and make her look less gray. But these eyes, they are just one block of pixels when you go in.

Yeah, it was a good catch on the septum, I didn't realize how much better she's look without it protruding from her nostril, lol.

I did notice the crooked-ness. I did add more shadow in attempt to I think fix it? I don't think that worked in my favor.

This is the full photo with edit. I was only working on her face though to start, eventually into a photo-manipulation.

intraCid wrote:
Am I doing alright so far? What am I not seeing/doing wrong?


Update:


Before:

Just my two cents worth and I am just a photographer and while I retouch all my photos, a retoucher would probably give better advice.  Not sure what your level of retouching work is, so I'll just fire away. The first thing that stands out to me is the hot spot on her nose, our eyes are drawn to contrast and that is where my eyes went.  Depending, I do one of three things, 1st I use the spot healing brush and then since that seems to leave a mark (control H) or the edit and select fade spot healing brush, I draw it back until the mark is gone and a little shine come though.  Since the spot healing brush grabs a sample from anywhere, the healing brush works well, select a spot equal in texture color and sample, fade if necessary and the 3rd thing is to use the patch tool and drag the spot to a similar colored spot. 

To me, the other main issue is her skin, it looks like it was sharpened and doesn't have a softened look toit.

Marin Photography wrote:
You need better photos to retouch, seek TF and make sure they use large hi res photos. Stuff like this isn't worth the effort for your port because no matter what you do, it's not gonna help a photo like this really. It will not show your work in a good light.  A photo like this, I never retouch the face, just blemishes because you can't hardly see the face so why bother really?

I hear ya. Probably not the best example for a beauty retouch but since I was working on it I figured I'd get some input no matter how low-res it is.
I find it's hard for me to find alternative images for projects.
Sometimes I work on them to see how much I can fix them up, unless they have a good pose for a manipulation I want to do then I turn them into digital art. I like doing a full retouch on them even if you can't really see it from far away. I'm just a little ocd about it I guess.

The Invisible Touch wrote:
I would suggest to pick a different image, the one you have chosen an image and zoomed to show us the face, why don't you pick a proper Beauty image from the Challenges area of MM??

You will be amaze of the results on a better quality image! Looking forward to see your work :-)

I wasn't doing it for practice, This image is for a project I am working on. Wanted to see how I was doing with what the image had to offer.
For practice I do use the MM challenges actually

intraCid wrote:
I wasn't doing it for practice, This image is for a project I am working on. Wanted to see how I was doing with what the image had to offer.
For practice I do use the MM challenges actually

Good luck with it then dude!! :-)