Playing with Lightroom5, will she like it?

[Martyn]

This is a picture of a friend that I took when I first got my camera. I've been watching loads of Lightroom5 tutorials on Youtube and this is the results of an attempted makeover. What do you think? Not sure about the hair though, maybe I've made it worse.

 

 

[geodar]

depends if she want's to look natural or Barbie dollish.

you will gather I am not a fan of this type of make over.

prefer the original.

geoff

[Dennyboy]

I love Lightroom 5, no woman likes to see her grey hair accentuated! Also i think you went a bit far with the skin smoothing brush, it's personal taste at the end of the day but i think a face should match the age. You bought the background back spot on, the face looks ok light wise. I would just revise the smoothing of the skin and maybe redarken the hair. Some good tutoring at jkost.com what she doesn't know about Lightroom isn't worth knowing. Love the radial filter brush in the new version.

[Martyn]

OOPS! Coming back to the picture again after having my tea, I can't believe the difference. I really must get into the habit of having a cooling off period before I post images. Just glad I didn't overcook my tea like that!

 

Thank you for the input guys, really appreciated. One good thing that's come out of this is that I've had loads of practice at using the healing tool and the brush tool, hopefully this will stand me in good stead for my next project!

Edited October 12, 2013 by Martyn

[Dennyboy]

If you subscribe to the Lightroom channel free on YouTube there are some cracking tutorials on there and i learnt some really good short cuts and features i didn't know were there. There is one for 10 hidden features which was interesting. The good news is you can click on the pin and scale the skin back a bit quite easy.

[Leon]

right you want my opinion??

 

her eyes look fantastic in the edit

 

now for the rest of it I think if she had approached you for a glamour portrait to hang on her wall then the edit would be top notch (if she was posed and dressed up ect)

 

as a candid I'm not sure she will like it, 

 

Like I said this is just MY opinion,but what do I know?

[NannyFerret]

I think the edit would have been suited to a younger woman, but maybe you could do a similar thing but with more transparency so the natural lines show though.
The background is fantastic,

I wonder if you could put the original shot over the other  as a layer or the other way round and bring the lines gently through. The people who know about these things might be able to point you in the right direction.
At my age, I have lines and would feel like mutton dressed as lamb if I plastered make-up on to cover them up so the same thing would apply in a pic..

[colinb]

over the top yes, but if you take your edit and your original and blend both layers, and reduce the top layers opacity to 50% (ish) ...

 

(just read Nannys post ^ who must have posted as I was doing just that - spooooky or what)

 

 

Click image to view large

Edited October 12, 2013 by colinb

[NannyFerret]

Great minds, Colin. 

Your edit has worked well.

 

I knew there was something about putting one layer over the other but not about the blending bit.
I would like to have a go at that one day.

Edited October 12, 2013 by NannyFerret

[Dennyboy]

Can't do layers in Lightroom at all, you work with an adjustment brush. But by scaling (editing the brush pin) back the you can achieve the same result. Unless you export it to Photoshop but i find i can do most things directly in Lightroom. You don't flatten layers and stuff in Lightroom everything is editable and reversible