I Want Some Negative Comments
I have a little experiment I want to run. Here is a photo I made a few months ago in which I spent a reasonable amount of time post processing in Adobe Photoshop. I really want some negative comments on it. Please, fire away and criticize to your hearts content. I have removed the limits on the site so anyone can comment without registering and you can be anonymous. Of course it would be nice if you at least attach your e-mail so I can thank you for your participation. The comments will be moderated for offensive language, but other than that I will pass them through as-is. If you have something nice to say about the image, don’t. I just want negative comments on this one.
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Ok, So, I don’t know what you did to her neck around the hair to the right side of the picture, but now her neck looks unnatural and E.T. like. There’s something wrong with the shoulder on her right being significantly darker than the shoulder on the left side of the picture.
If you are going to photoshop – do your best to lighten up all her skin discoloration/freckles from tanning on her body and forehead. Though I can’t tell if she’s covered most of it up on her cheeks and nose with makeup of if that is photoshopped.
You can try to even out the whiteness of her teeth. It may be that they are crooked, but I think they can be evened out in color to look all one shade. At least the front two.
Fix the strap on the left side of the picture.
Negative? Phil you are brave!
The only thing that bugs me about the ‘shopping is the outline of the hair. Where the hair meets the white background it’s too harsh–and looks photoshopped! I’d soften that. To critize the work more I’d have to see the original side by side.
Uh-oh, I’m feeling bold….
My other issues with the photo are totally subjective. AND I realize the client may have wanted it. That said, I don’t much like the Glam style of photos. Too fake, too forced, too to forumla. The model is pretty and doesn’t need the plunging neckline, the big earrings, the bright red lipstick, the cleavage makeup, or even the studio lighting. She’d look better just being whatever natural is for her, and not as a magazine cover wannabe. I’ll also mention, since it may be a cropping or contrast issue, whatever she’s wearing doesn’t work! Yes I see the strap thing, but it looks like she’s just wearing a black bra waiting for the shoot to start. If it’s a dress we’d need to see some more of it to get hit with that impression.
My final negative is that you are a much better photographer than I am! I should go take more photos right now rather than be typing. :)
You need to clean up all of the skin blemishes. This includes freckles, moles and discoloration.
It looks like she was silhouetted and the hair and shoulder edges on the white look unnatural. Looks like a razor cut. No depth. It is the hard edges that are really bothering me. Use the blur tool on some of the hair around the edges to add some depth to get rid of the cookie cutter look.
The area around the neck is too dark and makes her neck look too skinny. Facial shine is a problem too.
Cleavage looks enhanced and should be toned down. Her left shoulder (to our right) is too dark. Again the silo makes the lighting of the image look uneven.
Dress needs straps fixed. Black dress is too dense. Add some highlights to it.
Fix the highlights in the eyes and the white of the eyes. Smooth the facial lines.
I quite like freckles so leave them alone… Too red is her flesh it is and it looks like you’ve worked on her face but those lines on her neck need to be romoved… The highlights look good over all but on her cheek there seem to be a few pixels that are too hot… Teeth color as was mentioned above…
Cheers, Raymond
I agree with anonymous, her skin coloring is too red. You could “fix” her teeth to all the same length and same coloring. The smile lines could be taken out as well as the neck lines. You could blend out the freckles. The bra strap could be taken out as well. If you want, you could take out the skin folds on her arms where it connects with the body. If you wanted to you could make her nose a little smaller (not so wide at the end). Sorry, I feel negative feedback is bad, but positive (honest) corrective feedback is better. There’s too much negativity in the world today as it is.
Negative comments about the extensive photoshop or about the image all together?
Ok you wanted negative comments….
1. Get rid of the bags/wrinkles under her eyes
2. Skin tone is all over the place, brighter on her chest and darker on her face, if anything should be the other way around
3. Clean up the hair
4. Pose is not very flattering, have her turn her shoulders slightly and lean into the camera. Also try a different crop either include more or come in tighter. Don’t like the way the sides of her arms are cut off.
5. Get rid of the highlight on her cheek, it is distracting.
Over all if you are going to do Glamour style photography really study the masters and look at how the models are posed and how they use lighting to really highlight their model’s features. Your lighting is pretty flat and does not really add anything to the image.
Hope this helps.
Mead
Very shocking difference I found was her face from her eyes up to her chin is very clean…doesn’t have the skin blemishes. However the amount of it you can see on her neck and shoulder. This difference looks weird. However I don’t know whether you have really worked on her face to remove blemishes.
I agree with most of the above comments made by people across the world.
You can comment about the “extensive Photoshop” or about the image itself. Just as long as the comments are negative in nature, that’s the only stipulation.
As said above the blemish issue stands out.
There are no highlights on the dress since the model is rather large in the chest area and you have strong highlights in the face you should see the same on the dress.
The area of the right dress/bra strap was not full corrected, the line of the shoulder rises very sharply and does not match the neckline and has no shadow except for some kind of issue with the collarbone where the shadow is on the wrong side.
With the amount of forward flash that appears to have been used there should be some depth/highlight in the dark hair under the blond on the left side as you see on the earring on that side.
Redundant, but the edge of the hair should be softened. Even the teeth and lose some of the whiteness, looks to white, or punch the white of the eyes it looks unbalanced between the two.
If you have that much shadow on the left shoulder you should even the shadow up on the left side of the face and hair.
Where the neck and the head come together directly beneath the earring on the right side there has been to much work, the pixels look different than the surounding area. The shadow area between the hair and the left side of the face is uneven in the depth, you have a very dark defined line above and below the eye but it has very clearly been softened next to the eye.
Blond hair, dark roots, red toned eyebrows, hair and roots look right eyebrows do not.
It appears that the shrug of the left shoulder does not appear to match the right shoulder or the pose.
Negative comments huh? I thought we didn’t have negatives in the world of digital…
Only three things really jump out for me, otherwise this is a good snapshot.
1. The overall tone is a bit pink, I suspect it was shot with a Nikon. Shooting a color card under the same lighting conditions would allow the photographer to correct for that.
2. I think she was standing too close to the white seamless background or the background was too over-exposed. The light wraps too much around her and blurs the separation between her light-colored hair and the white background, especially on the left side of the photo.
3. I don’t know if there was a stylist on-site, but her hair is a little bit unruly in this shot. A quick hit with a brush and some hairspray would not be out of place.
Nitpicky things that I also see, but didn’t really jump out:
1. Reduce the creases under her eyes and on her neck and in her armpits for a cleaner look to the composition.
2. A red luminosity layer would even out her skin tone.
Holy Moly! Where to start? I think the above comments have covered most everything I would mention. A lot could be fixed with just a simple white balance setting and better lighting.
Check out this edit
Color correction done using a curves adjustment layer. Smoothed out the skin and reduced moles and freckles. Brightened eyes. Evened out and lightened skin. Blurred the hair edges a bit.
Not perfect, but way better!
The retouching (if any was done) looks good – not overdone. But then again, to really determine retouching quality you have to look at images like this at 100%. At this size, on the web, looks good. But, it is odd that she has freckles everywhere except her face (one exception is forehead). So maybe you overdid removing freckles (which I personally like)
But the color correction is bad – way too red / magenta. Also, if this were for, say commercial stock, I would have fixed her teeth. If this is an image where the model wants to look like herself, then not an issue.
Hope this helps!
I didn’t read any of the above comments, so I don’t know if I’m repeating any.
- Eyes need whitening
- blend on the earrings looks ghosty
- seriously uneven skin tones
- ditto for the hair
- if you’re going to spend that much time on this, work the teeth.
- veins on the breasts are always gross!
- take down some beauty marks
- bra straps shouldn’t pinch/divot in
- what’s going on at the left shoulder near the strap?
- use dodge/burn to reduce double chin
- neck wrinkles should come out
- minimize the clavicle bones
- liquify/push down right shoulder
- flesh is too heavy overall
Aside from that, very nice!
If you spent time on this image you have not made much improvement unless of course you started with a man, or spent most of the time on the boobs. I see lots of comments suggesting what needs doing which I don’t think was your question.
Why would you spend hours making her look ‘fantastic’. If this was your wife going out for the night would you take her aside and suggest she should do something with her bra straps, whiten eyes, get her teeth straightened, loose the wrinkles, get the veins in her breasts removed, get her shoulders straightened, touch up under your eyes and loose some weight! Who are we kidding here?. Spend a bit of time on your lighting, save hours in photoshop.
1. Point of shooting is too low.
2. Use lenses with focal length 85 mm and more for portraits.
3. Eye need whitening.
4. Hair isolation is poor.
5. Eyes is not in focus imho.
6. Image in general is dark.
7. Make skin less red.
May I say that is a very bad lit and pose picture? sorry ….. ^_^
.-= Gabriel Morosan´s last blog ..Vancouver 2010 by Gabriel Morosan =-.
Spoiler alert! Feel free not to publish this one if I am correct.
I may be totally incorrect, but I believe you have everyone firmly by the leg and are pulling vigorously. I believe this is a completely unretouched, original photo. The neck on the model’s left is hidden by the dark area of hair. Her makeup covers any blemishes on her face.
The most negative thing I have to say is that the “Not perfect, but way better!” edit someone added looks like a caricature to me.
Please let me know if I am wrong.