Before and after with Karen

[rogerfsmith]

In the old Hollywood glamour days, shots were made with fairly hard lighting and soft lens and then hours of retouching to 8x10 negatives was the norm. Here is a shot in that genre of Dallas model Karen:

This is the original shot with the hard lighting and the lens was a bit too sharp.

Here are three retouched versions for you to peruse and decide which one you like best. I basically did the initial pass, and then lowered the opacity on each of the other two. One is at 50% and one is at 75%. Here are the other images:

At 100%


At 50%


At 75%

Which do you prefer and why? By the way, this whole technique takes about 1 minute in Photoshop which is a far cry from the hours that the retouchers went through in the old days when they worked directly with the negatives.

Cheers,
Roger

[Tawny]

I like the last one due to the skin softening and crop. I do not like that the reflector or light source you used is hitting her dominately in her right eye (our left) I would dodge the white in the other eye for a more evenly pronounced light or use your history brush on the right eye to make it even. Which ever you like, but I think the image is nice, good pose and I really like the cropping on the last one that you presented. It brings the eye directly toward her beautiful face. The first I am floundering to figure out where I am supposed to rest my eye. I am not sure if it is her waiste, the gloves, or what.

The last one is bellisimo except that small thing I mentioned... ;-)

[rogerfsmith]

Originally Posted by Tawny

I like the last one due to the skin softening and crop. I do not like that the reflector or light source you used is hitting her dominately in her right eye (our left) I would dodge the white in the other eye for a more evenly pronounced light or use your history brush on the right eye to make it even. Which ever you like, but I think the image is nice, good pose and I really like the cropping on the last one that you presented. It brings the eye directly toward her beautiful face. The first I am floundering to figure out where I am supposed to rest my eye. I am not sure if it is her waiste, the gloves, or what.

The last one is bellisimo except that small thing I mentioned... ;-)

Thanks for your note. Here is a slight variation on the same shot. What do you think about the eyes? The last was my favorite for the crop also.



cheers,
Roger

[Tawny]

Like I said, Either way I think it is a lovely photo. I think you should try dodging the irises to have the catch light illuminating all of her eye... Beautiful work again!!! I posted an example of a quick dodge of the iris.