very nice photo but that hand/finger nail distracts me for some reason.

brilliant editing though

Not really man. It´s all about patience I guess. Most people overdo their retouching or just flatten the skin because they´re too lazy to sometimes go to 500% view and patch out little impurities, which takes it time. I also tended to be impatient and did my skin retouching too rashly. I ended up with really doll like and flat skin without any texture.

By now I make an effort to keep the skin as natural as possible, while also making it look flawless. As I said, now I need 30min + for just the face retouching instead of 5-10. Depends on the image. I use a mix of patch, clone stamp and healing brush tool. Different areas require different tools.

Another big part of the retouching is the dodging / burning. I lighten up eyes if I want to, or just make the lights / shadows more dynamic.

There sure are a lot of tutorials that all deal with certain aspects of retouching. I´m trying to watch other people´s techniques on a regular basis and modify them for my personal use. I still got tons to learn, and I´m far from being perfectly satisfied with my own editing skills. Same counts for my photography. That´s what keeps me motivated.

I took my new D3200 to the lake with me today and tried to get some nice photos but not many turned out all that great (A lot of them looked great on the LCD during the bright sun but ended up being fairly dark and underexposed when I got indoors to view them).
Ill post a few of the ones I like and if you guys could give me some tips on how to improve that would be awesome.

Heres the first shot.
Shot at f/10 1/160 ISO-100
The leaves on the trees dont look so great but that may have been some over sharpening on my part.

Also f/10 1/160 and ISO-100
Im mainly hoping to get tips on how to get clearer, "better" images but composition tips are great as well.


I wish I had a telephoto lens. I saw an awesome hawk or osprey or something and it was in a great spot for a shot but the pics I took at 55mm were too far away.
But I didnt get a duck (also kinda far back, its cropped a good bit.)


This post was edited by AXIS on Apr 25 2013 10:35pm

We hosted a workshop for SIGMA today, took the 20 min break to grab the model and do some shots. Here´s the first:

too much highlighttttt

yeah face is too bright
also don't like the look of the knees, would crop a little higher

that´s a bit tricky. I went for a very bright look on that one. To me it looks perfectly harmonious on my mac. On my Samsung monitor it indeed looks way too bright. depends on the calibration I guess. Might turn it down a little though.

working on my frequency seperation techniques for retouching:

It's very bright




This I like !