Prom retouch - too far?

SSS

Hello Everyone,

I've been a lurker here for some time and have learned quite a bit from the sidelines but I think today it's time to jump in.

A few weeks ago my neighbor asked if I would take photos of her daughter before her Jr prom. Before hand we decided to use her backyard and which direction would work that time of day so she could be sure it was cleaned up. By now you're already figuring that it rained, and it did. So we ended up inside and it seemed like no where would work. I finally took a few shots in a corner and now that I'm looking at them I can't figure out why.

Before:


After a couple of hours of reading and trying different things I was able to get this from it:

After:


The daughter likes the result, Mom doesn't. Can you guys help me see where I've gone too far or what I should have done different?

Thanks for looking

Steve

zoomer

Leave the background as taken.
The shiny spots on her skin is your main issue.
You can clone over the shiny spots with same color skin from their faces. Then clone out the major blemishes don't make it perfect perfect.
About 5 minutes work.
All that blurring does not work, looks weird.

The flat light, well not much you can do about that.

With shots like this less is more when it comes to face work.

Great looking couple, love the dress.

Qarik

The issue is your flash work. you pointed the flash directly at them right? *wags finger* this leaves all those hot spots on their faces, flattens the light, and the shadows everywhere!

chrisdg

Yep, retouching is too drastic in my opinion. While the couple does have typical teen skin issues, the retouching (coupled with the flash hotspots) makes them too "plastic". I'd prefer somewhere about halfway in-between the before and after.

Or, maybe try a desaturated look to reduce the impact of the red pimples.

MileHighAko

Could you explain your post process steps and tools a little bit?

Icebear

I'm going to come at this from a totally different perspective. I think the image (whatever skin work you do) would be more pleasing in a portrait orientation. Recrop it.

zoomer

Before and after.
Hope this is ok. All with the clone tool and levels adjustment...about 5 minutes it was kind of involved evening out the skin tones.
Reduced red in the faces with the Saturation slider.
Just say so if you want me to remove the rework.
Just the brightening evens the skin tones out quite a bit. The trick to not take it to far...at least to my eye. Hope this helps...

Bryce Wilson

I'm still learning this re-touching thing and took the liberty to do some practice on your original image with a few of the techniques I've learned. This was about 6 mins of work with what I've studied so far.

(I used Icebears crop idea too)

Whatcha think?

Bryce Wilson

Darn it Zoomer....

Ya beat me!

kevingeary

The fact that it NEEDED so much processing is the key to solving your issue. Get it right in camera so it doesn't need a crazy amount of "fixing" later. Learn about light.

slpollett

For what it's worth, I love zoomer's processing. It looks so much more natural. I also love the portrait orientation as presented by Bryce. Put them together and you will have a result sure to please Mom and Daughter.

Sherry

dbveto

slpollett wrote: »

For what it's worth, I love zoomer's processing. It looks so much more natural. I also love the portrait orientation as presented by Bryce. Put them together and you will have a result sure to please Mom and Daughter.

Sherry

I have to agree with you, but I have another question does the shadow by his neck not bother anyone?

SSS

Thanks all for your feedback and suggestions. As some of you have pointed out I really did blast them with my flash. What happened was I choked. The rain came, the friends came, there was no where to go, it got crowded, it got hot, it got loud, I stopped thinking. This girl has had a lot of fun posing for me to practice (I'll post some of those once I recover from this mess) and I owe her a much better prom picture than this.

Zoomer and Bryce - Thanks for taking the time to create the examples. I tried to recreate your work by making a selection of their faces (both whole and just the reddest portions), reducing the saturation of both the master and the reds but both left them looking grey. That makes sense I guess, so the red needs to be replaced not just removed? But how, with what? Cloning from elsewhere would spread his blemishes, no?

Icebear - you're right. I was afraid to cut them off at the shoulders but Bryce's example looks fine.

The background is still bothering me. I can disregard the picture frame just because it is such a drastic change. I think the stairs cutting the top right corner and the shadow from the ear both have to go.

Thanks
Steve

zoomer

First increase the exposure.
Reduce the redness overall just barely, then select the part of his face that is especially red and reduce it just a hair more. Then do the cloning. Start with a small selection of clear skin, as you get started cloning that piece of clear skin will grow and you can clone bigger sections.
Think of their faces as painting pallets. Choose the brightness and color you want from a spot on their faces and then clone it into where you want it. It goes pretty fast...remember less is more, don't make the skin perfect.

After they are all done you can adjust the skin color...after the tones are evened out from the cloning you have done.

Leave the background alone, once you start you can't stop. If you remove part of the shadow you have to remove all the shadows or it will look weird....less is more.

You can't do a vertical crop unless you have plenty of pixels so it will not get pixelated after the crop....really just leave it how it is. The tighter you make the crop the more critical your cloning job becomes....better to leave the crop how it is.

All just my own viewpoints of course, others opinions will vary .

Icebear

zoomer wrote: »

....better to leave the crop how it is.

All just my own viewpoints of course, others opinions will vary .

BS, Mike. He's got plenty of data to work with. Oh, "just my own viewpoints of course, others opinions will vary."

zoomer

Icebear wrote: »

BS, Mike. He's got plenty of data to work with. Oh, "just my own viewpoints of course, others opinions will vary."

Gotcha .
My thought is that depending on how much of a cloning master he is....the closer the crop the more obvious it will be where there are errors, and if blur is used the blurrier it will look.

Having said all this I have recently looked at A LOT of prom photos on my daughters Facebook page and as prom pics go these are better than most of the ones I have seen even with nothing done to them....you could just fix the shiny spots most of the way and call it good.

Ed911

Hey, I like the way this is going...lots of examples...lots of comentary...informative.

Here's my contribution. A little warmer than already posted. Did it on my laptop. Some people don't like images this warm...sometimes I do, and sometimes I don't. By the way...as someone commented earlier...yep the second shadow ear bothered me, so I removed it...lol. My idea was to leave the boyfriend a little ruddy looking...rather than smooth over to much of his complexion. Same for her...used some smoothing for blending...but all in all...the rest was accomplished with clone tool and divot remover...lol. Removed the sconce and straightened the mirror some.

Hope you enjoy the variation...

Molotov Everything

This has nothing to do with the processing, but I was thinking the posing should be different. Namely, the guy should have been standing on the other side of her. With the way her hair is, it's flat on one side, and sticks out on the other, covering part of his face. If he was on the other side, you could see his whole face while still having them that close together, and he'd be blocking out most of that painting in the background too, and cloning out what was left of it wouldn't be as drastic of a difference.
But for what it's worth, I think getting rid of everything in the background looks like too much.