"Beauty in Velvet"

All comments welcome on this portrait. Advice? Thanks. Lorraine

Foster

I really like the pose, and the model is very good looking, so I rated it a 6,6. My only comments are that I would like to see the beautiful hair color in all the hair, the dark shadows in the middle bother me. Also, her lipstick looks a little crooked, and the eyeliner looks clumped below her left eye.

I can appreciate the sensual feel you were going with but honestly, the model looks like she is spaced out. The colour appears to be off as well. It doesn't have the soft, glowing feel to it that would have made it truly sensual.

If you agree with the previous comment then I use either of the following method to achieve a soft focus effect in Photoshop.

 

Copy the original onto a new layer. Change the blend mode of the top layer to 'Screen' and the blur it using Gaussian Blur. You'll have to experiment to decide by how much as it depends on the size of your original. As a rough guide blur by 1 pixel for every 150 - 200 across the horizontal dimension. Then fade the layer to suit your taste.

 

If the finished pic appears too bright then copy the original layer again and change the blend mode to multiply and fade the opacity until it darkens again.

 

The order of layers is this for best effect.. in my opinion.

 

Bottom layer - original untouched

 

Middle layer - original untouched - Blend Multilply

 

Top layer - Original blurred and blend mode Screen..

 

Try it with soft light blend also. It increases contrast but sometimes the effect is nice.

 

Hope this is useful to you.

Great pose, but I too am bothered by the overdone eye make-up and the dark part of the hair. She has beautiful eyes, so why make the "black globby stuff" distract from this? The hair issue is not as distracting, but since the flowing hair is a major part of the image, it would be nice to see the color continuous. I don't normally like flash-on-camera shots, but it works well for this pose!

Her eyes make the picture.

Whats so beautiful about this picture? She isn't attractive so why would we want to see more pictures of her? The lighting is flat with no focus. Maybe in a different pose this picture would of work or work for her. The skin tone is all over the place. She probably work better in b&w. I would photograph her in a more photojournalistic style.

It's a nice picture underneath but the manipulations have been too heavy handed. It's best to apply a blur filter to a selectively copied layer with 50-70% opacity so some of the fine skin details (even blemishes) are visible but at low contrast. This is kind and still looks realistic. ( For bigger red skin marks: select, feather and apply image / adjust / hue saturation / choose red / lighten). Keep playing. Show us the next version...

Lovely eyes.

take that boa away, i have now discussed this with myself and it is this boa that doesnt work for me, sorry but a bath robe would be better than this thing, it doesnt do you any favours im affraid, being seductive as you are, you dont need this, sorry, just my view

 

update>....... Seeing this again and again, i find it growing on me more, but that boa!, silk or cloth i fell would still be better. great work in compositioning and focus is as always spot on.