editing images on photoshop for digipak

Being able to shoot photos for our digipak in the photography room using a kodak camera we had some ideas about how we wanted to present our artists. The thing is we didn't want to portray our artist in a sexual way as that is not what our artist is about. She is all about empowerment for all females and to be able to put across to the world that being half naked isn't the only way that female artists sell, its purely based on talent and being able to connect with the audience. We wanted our artist to look sophisticaed and sexy without showing assets of her body parts.

As i looked back at my image i noticed that i could add more to enhance her look and make her look fabulous. As i am a photography student as well i am familiar with Photoshop and realized that i could do so much more with the images. As all human beings and celebrity's, artist also have flaws that are either covered up with makeup or using technology, as we didn't glam up our artist too much using make up it was easier to Photoshop. Our artist had scars and dark patches on her skin which were visible in some places but nothing that photoshop couldnt handle. Below is the artist and her normal skin without the photoshop affect(the image that is shown is not the same pose for my front digipak but i just wanted to show the scare and how the skin wasnt photoshoped before so you can tell the difference):

As you can see her skin was smooth but editing would make it look even better. In photoshop i used the Clone stamp tool; >>>

 which basically copy's a part of her skin that is flawless and i can then paste it onto the piece that needs to be covered up as you can see below she had a scare and now it has disappeared. (screenshots step by step of how i achieved a scare less look):

I adjusted the diameter so that it could cover up more in a short space of time.

After achieving this look i decided i wanted to airbrush the image by using blur on Photoshop, Below i will show step by step how i achieved flawless skin. (I am now using the image that i used form my digipak):

As you can see i had to play around with the Radius and the Threshold as i didn't want her to look too fake and but just right and natural, after this i played around with the lighting as i wanted her lips to pop out.

After i had edited all that i thought was needed i went on to www.rollip.com, where i can upload the photo and  change the effect and so i did. below is the final image: 

I am extremly happy with how the image has turned out as i feel that although it was a long process in finding the right lighting effect and the right contrasting effect it worked perfectly fine. i feel that the lips and the green ear rings pop out to the audience and her skin looks glossy and flawless and this is the look that we are going for. I especially chose this image because i was inspired but "The Saturdays" album cover where it was all head shots of them and i thought it was really different, clean and classy. (below the saturdays album cover)