20100626-IMG_6098

Lovely pose, lovely model, lovely photo.  My biggest nit is the tattoo.  In this instance I feel that it really takes away from the image.  It looks like a piece of something stuck to her beautiful skin.  Worse, it knocks her whole body off balance, in my opinion. With her permission, I'd suggest photoshopping it off.  Then you would have an exquisite image.

That pretty much covers my thoughts about tattoos. I'll have to see if my PS skills are up to the challenge.

Yeah, the tatt is in an unusual spot.  Could I make a suggestion?  You might want to take down the roundish highlight on the upper knee.  It's not that I have anything against hilights, but in this case I think it pulls your down from her face.  Interesting pose!  Nice work.

I see what you're talking about. I hadn't noticed that before. It's particularly pronounced in this web version.

I have to say I agree about the tattoo, but it's easily fixed in PS...

... like this (link to larger version above).

Best wishes,  Jonathan

(but I quite like her shiny knee)

I love it! I can't think that I've ever seen a body that was improved by being drawn on. Thanks for the work.

And while we're at it, do you have any PS techniques for dealing with underarm stubble? It's not particularly obvious in this image, but it presented a problem in some others from this session.

Being "of a certain age" myself I quite like underarm hair but stubble definitely doesn't look good.

My technique is to select the area, copy and paste it onto another layer and apply gaussian blur sufficiently that the detail is completely lost. Then I set the opacity so that just enough detail is visible to look natural but not stubbly. Using "curves" I adjust the second layer until the highlights and shadows match the surrounding areas, then increase the colour saturation until the grey look is gone. Finally I merge the layers.

It sounds fiddly but actually it's quicker than writing it!

Best wishes,  Jonathan

Sounds a little like what I was trying to do, but with a few refinements (particularly at the end) that will probably make it look a lot better. When I did it, though I improved things, it was still pretty obvious there had been a cover-up attempt.

... yes I think using the partial opacity layer is key to making it subtle.