The Monday Retouch - Submit Your Images For Next Week !

Its Monday so as promised here is the completed retouch for last weeks winning submission by Mitchell Flores. For only being the first week of this regular segment we had an great number of submission and it was hard picking, can't wait to see what you guys submit this week. In this post I'll go over some of the steps of the retouching process and talk about the challenges for this particular image. If you would like your image to be selected for next week, post your low-res image in the comments below by Wednesday of this week.

The Retouching

Most of the retouching for this image was pretty straight forward. I start in Camera Raw taking a look at color profiles and using the RAW info to flatten the image out a little bit. Once in Photoshop I was able to follow a fairly standard beauty retouching process. 

Basic Skin Cleaning

I used the Healing Brush and The Clone Stamp as well for certain areas. Being sure not do only use one layer. This is important to remember, once you have done something that works and you attempt to continue to work on the same area, use a new layer so you don't clone or heal over the good work you've just done.

Negative Dodge & Burn

Using the Beauty Retouch Panel, I was able to quickly setup my dodge and burn curves layers and my helper layers. You will notice that I will toggle in and out of black and white so I can see everything I need to as I work. I also adjust the curves layer as I go that way in lighter areas I can see detail as well as in the darker areas.

The Challenge

The challenge with this image was color matching in the skin tones. Skin just like everything reflects the objects around it. So when placing your subject close to other object, like green leaves and purple flowers, your skin will reflect those colors. You may notice in the speed retouch video there are areas of the skin that are have more red and other areas that have more green. 

The shadows from the leaves, which create a pretty neat effect, also make the the color matching more challenging because there are not only color shifts but luminosity shifts as well.

What Next

For these segments I limit myself to 1 hour, so if I continue to work what else could be done? 

Eyelid Texture. The texture on the eyelids could be addressed and corrected a little bit.

Dry Lips. The lips still appear a little bit dry. Some work was done during dodge an burn to lighten the darker cracked areas that make the skin appear to be dry. Some additional texture work and dodging and burning could also be done.

There are a couple of other small things that could probably be addressed, it also important to remember that sometimes making an image too perfect can change to overall aesthetic of the image.

Submit Your Image

If you would like your image to be retouched this week, post it in the comments below. ANY GENRE of image can be submitted. Can't wait to see everyone's work!

Lance Nicoll's picture

owner of Lance Nicoll Wedding Photography - Fine Art Wedding Photography Studio

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7 Comments

Thank you!!

Straight from the camera

Love seeing your process!

Could you tell something about the color correcting part on blank layers, with Hue and Color blendig mode? That was the interesting part, that would be interesting to talk about! :-)

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My girlfriend captured in Canon 6D and a 50mm f1.4 lens. I have a RAW file and I'd like to see what it can result.

Id love to see what you could do with this one :-)