80% portrait, 20% image manipulation...

A bogus chicken wire background was popped to bring life to the

boring high key setup. Pensive look... what do you think?

I think is great. Actually the bg is the think I like less, but the portrait is amazing. I love it! The exposure and the sharpness are absolutelly perfect. The skin is soft and blured while all the details in the eyes and hairs remains. Excellent work!

Thank you, Michele. I did PS this quite a bit. Making skin totally flawless is usually not my cup of coffee in portrait work, but Alina's look was so unnaturally strong and focused that I decided to give this photo a kind of a "cyborg" treatment.

Very good portrait, great effects, 6/6

Nice sharp eyes and the job done on the skin is fantastic. Great work!

Fantastic Olli! 7/7. Please elaborate more on how you used PS to get the skin to look so soft. Almost like cream.

Scott: Oldest trick in the book.

 

1) zap all clear blemishes (pimples, scars...) with a healing brush

 

2) Make two layers, name the top layer "blur" and the other "normal"

 

3) blur the "blur" layer with Gaussian blur, around 10-15 pixels in a raw 8Meg DSLR image.

 

4) put a "hide all" layer mask to the top "blur" layer

 

5) paint away the black mask with a white soft brush with low opaque and flow settings little by little from the cheeks and other wide skin areas. Leave lips, eyes and other detailed areas intact.

 

6) enjoy the result

Hi Olli :)

I'm a fairly regular user of PS, so allow me to nit-pick here. Her hairline is a straight giveaway of PS work, especially on the right side (her left). The outline betrays spots where the mnarguee or magic wand missed out sections.

I really like the lighting though, and the black & white. Superb tonal range and nice overall softness (though I feel the eyes could still be a bit sharper).

Best regards from Kenya,

Mark

So clean lighting! I love it!