NSFW Photoshoppery: vaguely NSFW

[juggler]

While I've been laid up I've been trying to learn some photoshop stuff in a more methodical fashion than just scouring the internet for random tips of variable quality. I'm deliberately heading towards to fashion retouching but I'm not yet sure what I think of these.. I like them but they're all in some sense overcooked, showy, dramatic & implausible - and I can see flaws in all of them. All (polite) thoughts welcome

1. Hair, skin & clothing work, significant background tidy, creation of background elements to tie the two halves of the image together, contrast & toning.



2. Skin, clothing, replacement wall & floor created in PS, fake flare, contrast & toning



3. Extract from complex background, create new background & shadow in PS, toning



4. Hair, skin, background, clothing


5. Detailed hair, skin & clothing work, add texture to background, dodge & burn

 

[doublemint76]

They look pretty good to me and not over cooked as you put it, very nicely done in fact for what you are trying to achieve.

You have to expect a more polished look when you go for the higher end retouched look. I suffer the same problem as you, in that i think i've gone too far sometimes, when most of the time you haven't. Its because we know how it started out, and when you make drastic changes you think everyone is going to notice, when in fact if done right they rarely do, even more so to the un-trained eye. You have probably been editing in high res on a decent monitor where you see every floor and detail, you then post online and cannot even see them half the time. I've done this with skin and hair work, especially if zoomed in, you zoom out and can barely see what changes you've made, or not enough to warrant the amount of time spent on it.

As far as critique, like i say i quite like them all. The skin looks a bit red in 1 but could just be my eyes, its early. Good job on the whole.

How long did it take you edit these and did use liquify at all if you don't mind me asking?

 

[juggler]

They look pretty good to me and not over cooked as you put it, very nicely done in fact for what you are trying to achieve.

You have to expect a more polished look when you go for the higher end retouched look. I suffer the same problem as you, in that i think i've gone too far sometimes, when most of the time you haven't. Its because we know how it started out, and when you make drastic changes you think everyone is going to notice, when in fact if done right they rarely do, even more so to the un-trained eye. You have probably been editing in high res on a decent monitor where you see every floor and detail, you then post online and cannot even see them half the time. I've done this with skin and hair work, especially if zoomed in, you zoom out and can barely see what changes you've made, or not enough to warrant the amount of time spent on it.

As far as critique, like i say i quite like them all. The skin looks a bit red in 1 but could just be my eyes, its early. Good job on the whole.

How long did it take you edit these and did use liquify at all if you don't mind me asking?

Thank you for taking the time to reply.

1.. I used a gel with a red tint, That may have been an error!

I used liquify in all but number 3 - mainly for hair and clothing but also the odd bulge, sometimes a little nudge of forehead or jawline. I reckon.. that if my lighting or posing instructions cause unflattering effects then it's up to me to deal with them.

Editing times:

1. This was the second attempt & took just over an hour. The first was considerably longer and much less successful.
2. Probably 90 mins though a fair amount of that was learning how to create the background.
3. Probably 90 mins again but most of that was extracting the subject - I'm slow with the pen tool
4. 60 mins
5. I'm frankly embarassed to tell you how long this took, I'll just show the before & after and leave you to work it out. The problem was that I had an idea of the techniques I wanted to use rather than the end point. Consequently I spent a lot of unnecessary time with some fiddly techniques when I could have done something much simpler, especially for web display.

 

[doublemint76]

Thank you for taking the time to reply.

1.. I used a gel with a red tint, That may have been an error!

I used liquify in all but number 3 - mainly for hair and clothing but also the odd bulge, sometimes a little nudge of forehead or jawline. I reckon.. that if my lighting or posing instructions cause unflattering effects then it's up to me to deal with them.

Editing times:

1. This was the second attempt & took just over an hour. The first was considerably longer and much less successful.
2. Probably 90 mins though a fair amount of that was learning how to create the background.
3. Probably 90 mins again but most of that was extracting the subject - I'm slow with the pen tool
4. 60 mins
5. I'm frankly embarassed to tell you how long this took, I'll just show the before & after and leave you to work it out. The problem was that I had an idea of the techniques I wanted to use rather than the end point. Consequently I spent a lot of unnecessary time with some fiddly techniques when I could have done something much simpler, especially for web display.

View attachment 125593

Hey, you don't need to feel embarrassed about editing time, i've lost hours on images trying things out and i'm not the quickest with the pen tool either, i need to use it more often to build up speed. My problem (apart from lack of time) is that i haven't developed a proper workflow that i'm happy with and forget techniques so have to refresh myself. I always sleep on an edit too, its amazing what you can miss and how your mind changes the next day.

It may have taken you a long time, but i think you've done a good job with number 5, worth the time. Some will probably think its overdone now you've posted up the original but i think its a clean, natural beauty retouch. Did you use frequency separation?

 

[juggler]

Hey, you don't need to feel embarrassed about editing time, i've lost hours on images trying things out and i'm not the quickest with the pen tool either, i need to use it more often to build up speed. My problem (apart from lack of time) is that i haven't developed a proper workflow that i'm happy with and forget techniques so have to refresh myself. I always sleep on an edit too, its amazing what you can miss and how your mind changes the next day.

It may have taken you a long time, but i think you've done a good job with number 5, worth the time. Some will probably think its overdone now you've posted up the original but i think its a clean, natural beauty retouch. Did you use frequency separation?

Thank you. The majority of the skin work was micro dodge & burn & spot healing tool, followed by extracting the detail on a high pass layer clipped to a another layer where I just painted with the brush. I used a little bit of FS on the low frequency layer to even out a couple of areas where I could see that my painting was a bit lumpy.

At this size the skin does look a bit featureless. The texture is all there full screen; that's a lesson to me to inspect the results at lower resolutions too.

 

[doublemint76]

Thank you. The majority of the skin work was micro dodge & burn & spot healing tool, followed by extracting the detail on a high pass layer clipped to a another layer where I just painted with the brush. I used a little bit of FS on the low frequency layer to even out a couple of areas where I could see that my painting was a bit lumpy.

At this size the skin does look a bit featureless. The texture is all there full screen; that's a lesson to me to inspect the results at lower resolutions too.

Its still good experience to retouch to that level though, and looks great when viewed at high resolutions. I've found using helper layers really useful, in particular black and whites ones for dodging and burning.

 

[Livin The Dream]

I'm going to have to look up how to create backgrounds now. Thoughtful, intriguing work as usual. It's good to see you pushing yourself further and further. I'm not so keen on the overall look of the first but the rest look great.

I've been watching some Pratik Naik tutorials recently and one of his big things seems to be not zooming in too much and broader D&B as opposed to micro. Guilty as charged with that but I still need to force myself to practice more. Those helper layers are definitely important Dan.