Makeup in Photoshop

I love playing with my makeup, so I decided to hone my Photoshop makeup skills by trying out the following tutorial: http://effects.worth1000.com/tutorials/161629/make-up

I started with the following picture, where I tried to emulate the angle of Scarlett Johansson's face in the tutorial:

I then followed the blog's instructions on how to perfect the skin by pressing Q and using the paintbrush tool to select the skin area and then feathering it and adding a Gaussian blur.  A few times I had to reselect an area because it was hard to do it on my laptop with the trackpad rather than a mouse.  I reduced the opacity of the background copy layer a little bit, but I didn't think the blur and feathering made a large enough difference that I needed to make this layer really opaque.  I also cropped the image in this step.  The results are as follows.

The next step was adding eye and lip makeup.  This step was fun--I first added black eyeliner and then I selected a dark grey for my eyelid crease area and a green for my lid and under-eye color.  I then chose a berry color for my lips and added "lipliner" a shade darker.  I was pleased that the eye makeup did not cover over my eyelashes or make them look funny.  I had this problem in class, and for some reason it did not happen this time.  That was a relief because I did not want to use the pen tool to draw in individual lashes!  For all of the makeup steps I used a Gaussian blur and changed the opacity to make it look as natural as possible while still maintaining the fun makeup look.

Next I did face definition.  This step really did remind me of real makeup.  I used the brush tool with white on Soft Light and highlighted the T-zone along with the tops of the cheeks.  I then contoured the cheekbones by using the brush tool colored black on Soft Light.  Both layers were then Blurred and the opacity was reduced to make them look more natural.  I also learned the importance of ensuring that it was on soft light...  at first I forgot and the cheekbone contouring looked a little too Halloween-like!

Finally, I sharpened the eyes, nose, and mouth area to add more definition to the picture.  I then adjusted the blue/cyan levels in the picture (just slightly--too much looks weird) and called it a day.

Overall, I was pleased with the effects.  The only thing I might change is adding some highlights to the collar bone as well (and maybe not having a shower curtain as the background and the poor bathroom lighting next time).  I am looking forward to using the techniques and tools that I experimented with today in future projects!