PBase

I was asked to take a photo of a friendso that he can use the picture for one of those social networking sites Mytwitterfacespace or something like that. He also wanted me to edit it so that I can minimize what he believes to be are flaws. He gave me free reign to do as I seem fit. I have only begun to practice doing such work. This is the first time I have done so by request.


I tried to edit the picture in a way that, outside of subtle alterations, he is relatively unchanged. I tried to maintain natural skin colour and texture without looking "fake" or "airbrushed." Did I overdo it? Does anyone with more experience have any tips or advice?

Please? Anybody? Is it okay? Did I overdo it? Does it suck? What?

I am not a pro photographer or a pro photo editor, but it looks fine to me. What problems if any do you see?

I would say yes it's overdone. It's too clean if that's possible. The face isn't quite video game clean if that makes sense, but it's close. It nearly comes across as airbrushed although I know you were trying to avoid that look. To me boys ought not to look like covergirl models. That's merely my opinion mind you, take it for what it's worth. I would also try to do something with the pose. There is something slightly off-putting about the way he's looking up from under his brows.
I think that anyone who looks at this image is going to want to know what missing..... This is hard to put into words. I don't do portraits or studio work. My subjects tend to be people engaged in some physical activity, so I expect to see flaws and such. To me that's what gives a person character and identity.

Being honest people don't look like that unless they've been photoshopped or had bad plastic surgery. You've got to show more restraint and if the subjects not happy with how he looks then photoshop's seldom gonna fix that

I would say yes to your question. Looking at the original size, I hardly see any skin structure left. Call me oldfashioned, but I think that men generally "need" less skin correction than women. And then, what's wrong with a wrinkle or a birthmark? [is that the correct word? English is not my first language...].
I do correct non-lasting flaws, such as insect bite marks and scratches. All other "flaws" could be softened, but they should be visible IMHO, because they make the individual who he is.

Another remark: The skin looks rather pink on my (calibrated) display. Is that is real colour?

The ID pic on a networking site needn't rise to the standard of a modeling headshot (they are usually small and most are self-held cellphone shots.) For this subject I'd probably begin with a combo of the lighten and darken color sampling in PS to mitigate the most extreme contrasts. Work small with high magnification and with a low percent of transparency. Use a high-quality noise filter like Ninja, and then fade the result to get back some texture (what we used to call "grain.") The best editing is when you can't tell there's been an edit. For a teenager, obvious editing is too humiliating, though women-of-a-certain-age don't seem to mind. And no one deserves to have their zits on public display.

Thank you all for your feedback. I did believe I overdid it a bit. I needed other eyes to confirm what I thought I too saw.

I think it's a bit overdone. If you did the correction on a separate layer in Photoshop, you might want to adjust the Opacity of the layer to bring back some of the original underneath. Anytime you end up with something that doesn't look natural, you have overdone it. Also, a look like this is more suited to a female face. You could work on the lighting as well. (Although I don't know if you actually took the picture.