Photos Gina (headshot)

Well this is possibly my best fashion/headshot to date am really pleased out how well it came out.


Gina by Kiteninja (Morgan Lee), on Flickr


Just need to finish editing the rest of the set

 

Lovely dramatic shot, what lighting are you using, the low catchlight is confusing me as it looks more left lit?

 

60x60cm softbox & 40CM Silver BD with a grid,

I'll upload the setup shot tonight (need to remember), I think for this one she was actually slightly off centre which gives the side shadow, clamshell arrangement softbox on the bottom and BD on the top (powered by 2 Bowens 500Pros).

 

I like the shot, the lighting, the pose etc. But I think you've gone a bit overboard with the skin smoothing.

 

I agree with JazzXP, it's a great shot but I think you need to leave more skin detail in there, it's way too retouched and you detract from the effect a bit with the skin smoothing.

 

Great lighting, great pose, great model... way too much retouching!

 

Skin smoothing is very marmite i find either you like it or not, its had very little in the way of smoothing, mostly blemesh removal & some surface blurr, bit of a burn layer and contrast adjust the main reason for the smoothing was the massive tan lines she had and with out smoothing the skin it just looked crap.

It does look like a shot you'd find in a magazine though .

I'm getitng stuck into editing tonight so I'll upload an original shot (meant to do it last night ended up going climbing lol).

 

+1 on too much retouching. Looks plastic. Other than that, great looking shot. Skin tones seem a little hot as well (on verge of overexposure- top of forehead).

 

The OP said it was a fashion shot. That shot is good enough for any fashion mag, table glossy I can think of....have any of you read one lately ? I suggest you do, they are FULL of photos with similar skin smoothing.

Mission accomplished, great pic.

 

she's fit tho innit

 

Might be a tad bright I'll give you that its does blend into the cheeks though, I might go over it again tonight throw in an additional burn layer (to the other 12layers this images has got lol)

Thank you

Also if anyone is interested this is being Blown up to A1 (you gotta love the 5DII).

 

Here is the original shot for reference


Original by Kiteninja (Morgan Lee), on Flickr

 

I may be a complete noob but I think the original looks much better

 

If you did the blemish removal on this and no surface blur (or extremely little) I think it'd look better. I'm not one to shy away from skin smoothing (I typically shoot glamour myself so it's part of the typical glamour look), but be subtle with it, you want to smooth the underlying tones, but leave the skin texture.

 

I found it hard to remove the tan lines which are a little distracting, they required a bit of dodge and burn which then made that area look odd compared to the rest of the skin, my skin retouching skill is still very basic, I'll run over it again and re-upload just too see what the over difference is.

Do you have any tips on skin smoothing?

 

I much prefer the original. It obviously needs retouching, but natural retouching, not making her look like she's been encapsulated in plastic

I've retouched it for you.



as it was



Now I look at this, I'd even suggest that this is slightly too much.

Yes... loads. I read them all the time. I'm a photographer. You won't find this plastic looking skin in Vogue, or Dazed, or 125 Magazine. I think you need to redefine what "fashion" magazines you read You see it in "glamour" photography, but that's for amateurs and dirty old men.

No idea why mine looks more red... it's profiled. I think it's something to do with Photobucket. [EDIT] Sorted.

That wind machine is a bit 80s though

 

http://lh5.ggpht.com/eddie.con.carne/SAZuUq_o5QI/AAAAAAAAAPY/TD5txQT-mxU/vogue_paltrow.jpg

Maybe under your collection of Razzle's you may have a copy of Vogue.

 

This compliments her much better. But she already had a good tone on her shoulders and chest, just needed the bra mark blended and blemish removal. I'm a sucker for the more natural look though.

 

+1 for Pook's version TBH. I understand the need for skin smoothing and all that, but she just looks too......orange in your first edit, especially around the edges of her face, so it looks a bit unnatural.

 

Try this, a frequency split (this is assuming you're editing in 16 bit colour, setting are different for 8 bit).

Duplicate the background twice.

On the first layer (just above the background) run a blur of around 4 pixels

Select the top layer and go to image, apply image

Set Layer to the layer you blured, click invert, change blending to add, set the scale to 2 and hit Ok.

Change the top layer to linear light, it now should look exactly like the background layer.

Select the blured layer, and use the Lasso Tool to select the tanlines plus an area around it. Feather your selection (select, modify, feather) by 10 pixels.

Gaussian blur by 10 pixels and hit Ok, if that's not enough, run the blur again (Ctrl-F).

That should smooth out the colour at the tan line while keeping the texture intact (this technique is good for smoothing ribs, or cellulite too). Don't do it on the whole body otherwise it'll look a bit weird.

As for general smoothing, I use Portraiture with the settings Fine +2, Medium +6, Large +10, Threshold 6, this is probably a little high for general portraits, but works well for glamour photos.