It’s tricky because I think, color notwithstanding, the middle one is most flattering to the face of the subject. But it’s obviously too washed out.
If those were pictures of me, I’d pick the middle one and see if I couldn’t color-correct it!
The left one definitely. Just rubber stamp out the red spots on the right cheek and you’re good to go.
The first one. It’s the least fake looking.
Definitely the one on the left. The middle one is lacking the lines and creases around the mouth and eyes, which looks fake. And the one on the right is fuzzy, blurred and obviously retouched. The one on the left looks like a normal, natural, good looking man. If I saw the one on the right, I’d immediately know it was a fake/retouched photo, and the middle one just doesn’t look natural or realistic.
The one in the middle. The smile is better. Guy on the left looks vaguely malevolent, guy on the right vaguely insipid.
Well, the right one dives right into the uncanny valley. The middle looks like an alien. The left one looks like he’s exhausted. I guess I prefer the one in the middle, even though the smile does look fake. The color balance doesn’t bother me, it just looks like he’s in fluorescent lighting.
The center one. Looks the most natural.
Left.
The one in the middle looks too washed out (all of the color has been leeched away) and the one on the right looks too undefined (there’s no edge, it just kind of blurs into the background)
I do a lot of Photoshop work, but portraits aren’t my specialty.
I’m guessing that the one on the left has not been retouched . . . or at least retouched the least. In the other two, the smile lines connecting the nose and mouth have been softened, making the smile look unnatural. And the eyes in the third have been enlarged, and have totally lost their expression. The retoucher definitely went too far with the third; we really don’t need all that detail in the mouth and nostrils.
On all three, but especially the second, the top has been cropped too close to the head. And the first and second have been over-sharpened; you can see sharpening artifacts around the shoulders.
And oh yeah . . . the color in the middle one makes him look like a burn victim.
Left. The middle looks plastic. The right looks like anime.
1 looks the most realistic, 3 looks totally fake. 2 looks both realistic and more attractive, but isn’t sharp enough. I suggest using #2 but sharpening it a little and maybe boosting the saturation a tad.
Thanks for your input, folks.
The one on the left is untouched, and I agree that it’s the best looking. The one in the middle was worked over by someone else, and in my opinion the elimination of the nasolabial folds makes it look as creepy as hell.
Suggesting the natural portrait over the “worked on” got this response:
I have no idea what the Cactus Club reference was intended to signify. (The people in the photos on their website have pores and everything.) I suspect that she does “know crazy,” intimately.
The one on the right was a quick-and-dirty attempt at “shiny, happy” without the removal of shadows that contain information about the geometry of the face, which I think creates a weird cognitive dissonance.
I’m glad that I ran it by you guys first; it really should have been obvious that the smoooooooooviest was too much. A tiny nudge of an opacity slider to the left saved me a bit of embarrassement. (New far right for comparison.)
Once again, the SDMB provides the convenient illusion that I’m smarter than I actually am. Skipping past the different-kinda-creepy, I suggested this last as an alternative to the “burn victim” version and TPTB agreed that it was better. Yay!
#1 is the best for composition while not looking too heavily Photoshopped like #3. #2 is probably a better retouch job than the others, but I don’t like the way the top of the head gets cut off.
Unquestionably the first one. First one looks natural with reasonable skin tones. Second one looks washed out and too magenta. Third one looks airbrushed and fake. Even at that small size, it looks overdone and plastic and screams CHEESY to me. The rule of thumb for Photoshop that works for me, when you’re unsure if you’ve gone too far, is to Photoshop the photo, and then slide the opacity to 50% with the original photo underneath and you’ll probably be okay.
The photos also look slightly reddish on my monitor. I would also add a hair of midtone contrast (apply a slight “S” curve in Photoshop) and I’d either subtract a smidgen of magenta by manipulating the green curve in Photoshop, or you could bump up the hue of the red channel in Hue/Saturation to about +5. You might want to do it as a mask and just paint in the skin tones.
The one on the far right looks like those creepy photo manipulations where they take a picture of a toddler and end up making it look like a doll.
The original site I had seems to be gone, but there’s a few of those creepy retouchings on this page.
The one on the left. The middle one is a little too pale, and the right one looks freakish and airbrushed.
I am responding before reading any other responses. I like the middle one. The right one is over-manipulated IMHO and looks like a digital person. The left one has the skin tones a little too red. The middle one softens skin texture slightly without looking overtly faked, and has good skin tone.
The left. The one on the right is the worst because of the overly whited eyes and teeth, which make the picture look almost scary to me. (Not as in “Eek!” but as if “Ew.”) The one in the center is bad (though not as bad) because they’ve washed the face out by over-removing lines.