L'Oreal Hair Competition 2012

Phate

Phate

Phate

Caporegime
Joined
1 Nov 2003
Posts
35,691
Location
Lisbon, Portugal
You may remember my photo entries into previous hair competitions, previously I have placed a 3rd in Mens Essex Hair and 2nd in Girls Essex Hair competitions (a lot of entries so quite a lot of competition!)

I mainly do these as my best friend is a hairdresser and she likes to enter them and we work well together and I enjoy these as instead of just running off lots of studio based photos and giving a client a disk of anything that passed you are aiming for a very specific look, and you have to work closely with everyone in the team to fine tune the look each time the shutter button is pressed to get the image you are after.

Very chuffed with these two, I think the Men's particularly has got a good chance of placing in this comp...which is a heck of a lot bigger than anything else we've previously entered.

So I give you Thomas, and Rachel.

thomas.jpg


rachel.jpg


Rachel still needs the final skin smoothing to be done but that'll be done within the next few days, wanted to get these done, Thomas is a finished product :)

C&C welcome - oh and a behind the scenes video for this one will be produced as well :)

Thanks for looking,
Jake
 
The skin smoothing on the first one looks a bit too extreme. I know it's the style of these shots but even bearing that in mind it's a bit much...almost synthetic looking. If you were going to touch them up to that degree then I'd maybe lose some of the red from the ear and the red from the eye. I'd probably just give the skin some texture again though.

The seond one shows off the hair well although it's an odd crop...very tight.

Besides that, the lighting looks good. There seems to be a bit of a hotspot of some kind to the left of the guy's eye in the first pic.
 
I thought that was just the make-up making their skin smooth. Don't know how you adjust that in post. The reason I say adjust rather than fix is because I'm indifferent to it really.

The only things that bother me is the crease in the dude's collar and the chick's stud.
 
I really like the first one, really good job. I would have to disagree with above as I think the skin smoothing is fine but the only thing bothering me is the highlight to the left of the guy's face.

2nd one doesn't really do it for me as it just seems a little too close to the model. I'm not sure if this would have improved it or not but it also just looks like her neck is a little too twisted and it looks a bit awkward but to be honest I couldn't say it would look better less twisted unless I had another shot to compare it to.

Overall good job though. I think you have a very good chance with that first one! I am really looking forward to the behind the scenes video :)
 
I would echo what others have said...

Maybe also try removing the clothes from her shoulder (bit distracting for me)
 
I really like these, very clean look which wouldn't look out of place in a nice glossy mag or on the front of a hair dye package. I think the first may be a little too smooth, I know thats the look but it's almost a little waxy looking.

Only other critic for that one is the bloodshot/redness in his eyes, when looking at his left eye I'm drawn to the red tear duct rather than his iris, but thats an easy fix.

Hope you don't mind (and please let me know if you want me to remove) but I couldn't resist a 5 min edit of the Rachel image as it's such a nice pic. Although saying that I made a right pigs ear of removing the dress piece in shot (cant be bothered to correct :p).

PhateRachelEdit.jpg
 
Best of luck Phate :)

The second shot is cropped too close to her nose for my liking. It affects the balance of the shot for me.
 
Nice one GSXR :) Thanks for the comments all - I'll make some adjustments and repost Rachels one.
 
I'd also have to say the first one looks over-cooked to me. :( Looks like you've borrowed him from Madame Tussauds. :p But if that's the look that this style dictates, then please ignore my comments. :)
 
With regards to the retouching, its good, but you need to make highlights across the hair to make it bounce. A highlight around the edge of the hair (on the background) and making a highlight through the centre, will make it look more 3d and punchy, at the moment I think it looks a bit flat. Also, I don't know if its considered cheating, but the hair gaps need to be filled in. I have done one bit here, I would maybe consider evening it out even more.
2JUpC.jpg
vs
e3oaY.jpg
 
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Hey guys,

Ok took a few things into consideration and decided it was time to learn skin smoothing once and for bloody all.

Anyway, heres Rachel:

rachel.jpg


Thoughts?
 
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Skins pretty good, still has some texture. Few things that stand out to me though are where you have possibly cloned out hair from the top of her ear it looks all gammy and brown, and that the indent under and on the side of her lips needs softening, along with the slight redness under her lip, also the hair looks over saturated.
Aside from me being very picky about those items it's pretty good.

A current trend in the retouching world is to have very pale white'ish skin tones, by removing some saturation from the red channel in Hue.

Ps// I added you, but am off to bed now, so another time maybe.
 
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Adjusted the Red Hue

racheledit.jpg


Thanks for the add and the comments - I think reducing the red hue has helped with the hair above the ear a bit and the bit under the lip.

Also, don't forget your browser will render the image slightly different as well...in Chrome it always makes images darker for me, for true representation download and open in PS. :)
 
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K6hJW.jpg


The bit I mentioned was on the tip of the ear itself, Ive just cloned the colour back into to it, and the lip although I may have made it look a bit overprocessed, has had shadows removed.
 
Ah I see.

No matter how 'good' I think I am with processing I always feel like a noob when doing stuff like this :D
 
Tbh it was a good job to begin with, I sometimes go to far with mine. It's very hard to look relalistic and also clean and tidy. I often leave work for days and come back to it, because after working on something for hours I don't notice how much I've overdone it.
 
ChroniC said:
Tbh it was a good job to begin with, I sometimes go to far with mine. It's very hard to look relalistic and also clean and tidy. I often leave work for days and come back to it, because after working on something for hours I don't notice how much I've overdone it.
Click to expand...

Hehe what my fall over is is not being critical enough of my images when doing work like this, I far too often go 'ah that looks good, that'll do' I need to learn to look out for more imperfections and subtly fixing them so it isn't obvious :)

Be good to have a good chinwag on msn at some point, love discussing processing techniques. :)
 
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