Photoshop Glamour

As a wedding photographer I have been asked to do many strange things from add people to the photographs who were not there to on one occasion talk to the groom to coax him out because he had cold feet. Needless to say on that occasion I simply reminded the person asking me that I was a photographer not a councillor. The most common request I get though is to "photoshop" the brides complexion or some other guests complexion, by this they mean can I add that magazine glamour look minus all the wrinkles and blemishes and in some cases make them look younger than they really are. Whilst I have no objection to doing this I do think you can go completely over the top using this technique and make a 40 something woman look closer to 20 which I think can be very unflattering. There are many programs on the market that will do this job for you in no time with a few clicks but they are global effects and again I personally don't like them.
This image above is of my partner who kindly posed for me to allow me to enhance her natural beauty with a few simple techniques in CS3. All I have really done is remove some of the blemishes on her skin as most professional cameras are such high quality that they show up every pore. I then saturated her lips slightly and brightened her eyes. Finally I thickened and darkened her hair slightly. To pull her out of the background you will also notice that I darkened the door and in so doing I created a halo effect around her hair.