Well since many people are dying to state their views on the image I posted in the "blurring is not bad, highpass does not suck" thread, here it is.  By no means is this a "natural retouch", the intention was to achieve that impossibly perfect look represented in this list (https://www.modelmayhem.com/list/193613).

So did I get it?  What do you like, what do you hate?  Where does my retouching technique fail?  Have fun...say whatever you like.

Her lips look cut out, possibly blur the edge of any masking you're doing to that region a hair?

The skin doesn't look perfect. It looks blurred and texturized again with something that doesn't make it look like skin again. The new texture looks like little bumps, instead of beautiful perfect pores. It's not only that it doesn't look perfect, it's that it doesnt look like skin anymore... oh skin you beautiful organ what have they done to you.

The hair is gone and it won't print. I'm sure there was enough info in the raw so that you could bring some hair in. Black hair can stay black but still be printable and not just paper wetter.

There's hair over her ear in a way that doesn't improve the image.

Watch the skin tone. I don't mind that she is yellow cause that might have been your choice. The problem comes when she is has yellow hands, pink forehead and green arms. Use Capture One's uniformity tool for that and for anything skin, works great for your pre-merge conversions.

The forehead cloning where hair meets skin... i can tell. Shouldn't.

Apart from that, i think it's a good retouch and the makeup gives the needed impact that might get you more clients... which means you might have the vision but insist in killing everybody in town instead of just the bad guy.

so this was also brought up in the ANTM thread, when you use any type of a blur then sharpening technique you must, must, must, be aware of hands and feet. You want to be careful of the 30 minute retouch. I also personally believe that using the blur too much in retouching creates a certain laziness, which causes the retoucher to miss glaring problems.

I noticed you said that retouching shouldn't take longer then 20-30 minutes, there are a few things to point out to you

1. there is white in her lashes on both sides. It is distracting. For the right eye you need to draw some new lashes in. It is really easy, you just open a new layer, use the brush tool with a downloaded hair brush, do a bit of blur to the layer, maybe .5-1.5 pixels, and then set the opacity.

2. the browline is off- not fixable would have to go back to the original. many times if there is a bad browline I work on it on several layers. I do it once, reduce opacity, mask out areas that I did wrong, flatten onto a duplicate background layer and go again.

3. hair on the ears. Again, if you clean up all the hair EXCEPT the ear hair it looks really odd. Also there is hair coming off the ears too. In fact the whole bun is a mess.

4. the texture under the eyes is the same as the texture on the forehead. The skin under eyes is more delicate, and the texture under the eyes reflect that.

5. you need to separate the hair from the background.

6. the model has lost the cleft in her chin, and the portion of her face between her lips and nose. This has thinned her lips out and made her look older.

7. feathers, the feathers are flat and have no feeling of depth to them.

8. the blurred out baby hairs on her left shoulder bother me. Also you got rid of her entire left side's arm, making it look like she has no breasts. That  shoulder should have been lowered at least 2-4 inches. You then paint the nob in and give her a more delicate pose.

9. the body paint needs more depth to it, you lost the shading by blurring

10. the balls need more life and light, best way is to use a flare brush

look, here for educational purposes only is a few of the adjustments I talked about, I didn't touch her hands because of time, except i did help make the nails look more real. Working on a web sized image will never give professional results. This at least another 30 minutes of work, and it is needed to really create the image that is possible.
yours


mine

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If you are doing separation at all, this image feels like you choose a very small radius and blur the hell out of the rest. In this very case image lost some dimension somehow too but normally I've seen some very nice contouring work from you.

I can understand you are trying to get things done fast but your style looks very much like what Portraiture does with a few clicks.

I'm sure within a few years Portraiture will improve and new rivals may arrive and retouching business may get tougher with all the education going on as well.

This is a dog eat dog world.

Your choice.

The eyes are the least sharp feature, I see the eyes and then look at the lips, nose and right ear and it just looks off.

As someone else has said, her lips look cut out and pasted on, they look almost fake.

I can see the blur line on the top of her forehead, the skin texture just completely changes. I can see cloned out hairs coming through in a blur along her hairline.

Too much yellow in the skin on her face as opposed to the rest of her body.

Highpass and blur is fine for Glamor, not good for beauty....

I'm on a 30" calibrated monitor so I can see a lot that others don't, but I'll stop here...