my retouching work !!

[sherief mohamed]

Hey everybody ,

It's been a long time since my last visit , i will start to be more active

Here we go , what do you think about this retouched sample !! , this is my retouching work

Please comment what do you think about it !

Before

After

 

[Ken Tanaka]

Hello sherief,
You appear to be skilled with Photoshop. But the purpose of this craft is to achieve some specific image impression objective. Simply being able to construct a slick illustration from a photo is something any moderately talented kid in art school can do these days. (Even some not-so-talented kids!)

Let's see some of your work that responds to a specific visual objective you needed to achieve, perhaps as part of a design team.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hey everybody ,

It's been a long time since my last visit , i will start to be more active.

Sherif,

Glad to have you back. I have been waiting for this post! It's tough to follow Ken as his few words are targeted purpose tipped arrows that go the the targets that need addressing. Still, I have some suggestions to add. Your accomplishment as a user of post-processing effects is admirable but there's an extra element that could be added and that is "unity"

So I thank you for jumping in and showing your efforts and considerable talent. I feel that you have the skills to help folk with specific issues. So there's my praise!

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

Now, Sherif, I take advantage of your offering to hopefully provide some feedback you can use and to add to OPF a beginning reference to what retouching might require.

Before

I find this portrait to be wonderfully agreeable! She's good looking and seems delightful. I'd be proud of her as a friend, sister or daughter and would hope to meet her if I was single!however, this is about work and your capabilities. I think as Ken points out, without linking the before and after to some dependancies, we cannot judge the effects you are delivering.

The before is what? A head shot that needs for a job of a certain kind?

It's for whom? You or a client?

Does it have no purpose except to demonstrate techniques you have mastered and now can offer?

What specific techniques does it demonstrate?

What is the need of the client.

In retouching, there are several goals. As a start:

• Remove extraneous objects and lighting effects.
  
  
• Improve general photographic appearance without altering the essential "facts" of the portrait".
  
  
• Sculpt the picture to appear "perfect" for some prescribed esthetic
  
  
• Sculpt to fit in with a particular design shape and/ text so there's balance
  
  
• Modify the image to reflect a human feeling/emotion/purpose

So, before offering the end product, defining the project's needs is a must!

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

Here, Sherif, I've imagined a purpose as you will see!

After

​

So here is what's delivered and it appears laid out as if for a page in a magazine or advertisement with added text or else a page to be included in a wedding album, perhaps. Let's exclude the latter and imagine this is for an ad or editorial.

Let's also make a fantastic jump and guess it's about "looking", (given the enlarged dim eye added on the left). In first glance it is pleasant and could fit the needs of catching attention and drawing the reader in to the text message or story.

If the story was about a 70% sale at Macy's or Bloomingdae's or Givenchy it would work but the add agency might be fired after that. But why?

We mutually accept many facial imperfections in people we like. However, we don't necessarily choose aberrant features to represent us or our fortunes. First let me state that women can look in the mirror for free to see oddities. In magazines they might prefer beauty, the fantasy of magical balance, perhaps of a kind they were bathed in as little girls.

So what bothers me here? The face appears disassembled!

The natural god-given unity of the first picture has been torn apart by localized obvious photoshopping! Why magazines needs some plastic surgeons nose product, baffles me, but even then, it must fit in. Here, you have rendered the bridge of the nose to show an elegant and gentle highlight, but which stands out as a beacon! The left nostril is still dark and so appears plugged with death. The chin is softened to cause the eye to hover in confusion over it like a troubled helicopter trying to land. And then there's the one truth of the original that I find disturbing: oddly oblique fingernails that tip the well posed fingers!

This one item really bothers me! Here would be a useful demonstration of retouching prowess, to make the nails both elegant and fit into the picture. I could add the need to deal with the cracked dry lips, but that we might accept and even like since she then appears more vulnerable.

So, my overall opinion is that you have a lot of admirable skills and what's needed is the application for a defined purpose resulting in some "unity of being": no change calls attention to itself and the image, however fanciful and appears as natural as a flower that just opens.

Asher

 

[Ruben Alfu]

Hi Sherief,


IMO this photo has been taken into the realm of digital art. Not good or bad per se but hardly the ideal example of portrait retouching, especially without the context of a given purpose. Honestly, not a big deal so far, this could be your trademark style and that´s it. The problem I see is that I assume this is for self promotion, and if so this is supposed to be a sample of the best you can offer, no excuses. But there are a couple of things here that doesn't look quiet good: her warm expressive face has become a lifeless mask; the shadows distort her face, more notably on the right side and her jaw; the graphic design doesn't cut it, it looks amateurish.

Please note that my comments are limited to what I see in this image, nothing more than that. I've seen other more impressive works in your website.

 

[Leonardo Boher]

Don't want to sound harsh, but you need to push much more this image into something more realistic and eye catching because it looks too fake. The attempt is good, but the technique is poor. The first thing that comes up is that you killed the skin texture. The picture was almost good in the original version, which looks quite retouched already.

I would enhance the original mood of the picture trying to keep details and such, improving the lights a bit more and the like. Colors already look nice to me. Blurring the skin texture is not the way to do it professionally.

I did this kind of poor stuff when starting photoshopping, as everyone else, so keep improving and getting better!

LEØ

 

[sherief mohamed]

Thanks asher .. i appreciate these words

Ken thanks for the nice words to , actually this photo wasn't for commercial work , i just made it for My self , not for a propuse ..

But i got what you mean by image impression , definitely i would do it that way if it was more Commercial or like a request , but as i said , i just made it for my self .. that was before 1 year ago

And for the skin heavy smoothing .. actually i meant to do so .. , i won't do that if it was normal Picture retouching , but it's not a normal studio portrait !!

 

[sherief mohamed]

If some one else sayin any thing , please share your non ordinary work ( the special ones that you're hiding ) now

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi Sherif,

I want to thank you for accepting the feedback in a positive manner. It's tough to be open and that's both ways. We work with a lot of affection and striving for honesty. It's scary because you, Sherif have put your work out and it get's really examined seriously because we trust you are serious in your endeavors. So it's a balance of trust and risk.

I put the effort into looking at your work because I believe that post processing is an important part of photography that can be handed over with instructions and guidance to someone with the skills an intuition to express and constrain ideas in photography. Photography, after all, is drawing with light. We need to honor, respect and use this when the image we have in mind requires it. However, it's the direction and purpose as well as finesse that makes it successful.

I hope we might have some submissions for retouching and we all can have a go!

Asher