Retouching Project

These shots are some I took this week and both use similar retouching methods. Because my subject was male I didn't want to go too far with the skin retouching, but just fixed up minor areas on the skin, such as pimples and red blotchy areas. Below are the two original images.

Before opening the images in photoshop to start retouching I used Camera Raw to adjust the white balance and to drop the saturation a bit. There were a lot of red areas on the subject's skin so I also used the Hue slider (red) to even out this discolouration.

With the second image I thought it worked much better cropped in to a headshot/shoulders shot, so this was also done in Camera Raw. 

When retouching both images I started with the skin. Using the patch tool I removed any spots on the skin and tried to even out any noticeable areas. Next I brighten up the eyes, which was done similarly to in class: 

  

Duplicate the background layer, then change the middle layer mode to colour dodge. After this make your top layer a layer mask and using the brush tool paint over the eyes. Change the opacity of both layers to suit the image. 

Above are the final images. Viewing them at full resolution is probably best, as its hard to see the changes with these images.