I’ve been trying to get a handle on skin retouching lately, I’m not completely sure how I feel about these. I kind of suspect that the one is a little overdone, and the other a little under.
Skin retouching is a delicate thing and is not very easy. You have to know what you want to achieve and be very careful not to overdo it.
I don’t find the first photo overdone, but, in my opinion, the background is chosen unlucky because it comes very close to the color of the face and through the retouching the red color cast appears a little in the shadow side of the face. This makes the face look a bit “watercoloured”.
On the other hand, after retouching, the skin on the neck differs from the skin on the face, which makes it appear unreal. You can also try to treat the neck area to see what it looks like. Furthermore, try to sharpen the treated areas a little so that the small details popping up a bit more after the treatment.
To learn retouching technique I recommend an excellent and very detailed article by Pat David about Skin Retouching with Wavelet Decompose!
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