Improving on Portraits

Once again my own face (sorry) had to be polished to try some new tweaks Danilo considered discovered my looking closely at David Hill's shots. He assumes that hes desaturating his shit and re-colors it manually.
Regarding this option, i took a shot of myself with a one-colored T-Shirt as the main-sample to pay attention to.

(I) The original Shot
(II) De-mushed and tweaked Exposure (Fake-HDR)

(III) Manual Coloring (yes , the shirt actually has this color!)
(IV) Final Tweaks (Quick curves and de-saturating)

(V) All Versions in one Shot
As my final conclusion i have to admit that manual coloring adds a lot of work, but it's definitly worth all the effort. You take out the "normal" color noise that comes with the usual reflection of light that every surface in the room emits. To take care of unwanted coloring, this way is just the one to go.

Professional Skin Retouching Samples

Here are my first trys, where i got an insight on the mechanics in photoshop regarding retouching the skin and getting rid of the mush with the help of High Pass.
(this is just a small collection of my 3 favourites. for more click here)

Portraitshot of myself (Canon EOS 400D) / 26-09-2007
Portraitshot of myself in detail
(yes i just held up the cam - and it's even HDR! just click on the images to enlarge.)
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Retouching on Canon eos5d Sample /19-09-2007
Retouching in Detail
(you can even view the original eos5d sample here. just click on the images to enlarge.)
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Danilo the Biter (Canon EOS 5D) / 18-09-2007
The Biter in Detail
(my pal kinda battled me on his own portrait, and i think it got pretty nice. click to enlarge.)