Just wanted to hear oppinions about doing the good ol' airbrushing... I think at times it's good and all but then again it's kinda iffy so I'd like to hear from all of you... above is an example of one I just did (only learning still) oh and the photo isn't mine

great work there. Made her look alot younger and glamourous.

I think you could've done some work on her hands as well...

I think you somehow managed to take a fair amount of her tan away... whether that was intentional or not is another question but i would have left it, and yes a bit of work on the hands would put the cherry on the top.

www.fluideffect.com - is down at the moment - but from memory their portfolio stuff has a lot of before and after shots of airbrushing (portrait and full body)... if you havent seen it already (it came up in a thread ages ago) then you could get some tips just by observing how the pros do it i suppose :)

Aside from the things mentioned above, very nice job. I don't think you were too heavy handed, which is important. :o)

May I ask what you mean by airbrushing? You mean creating a fake/adapted skin on another layer and then airbrushing the mask, or do you really mean airbrushing the skin itself?

I am not a big fan of perfect airbrush skin as you can tell in my gallery. I do understand if the model is in a Glam outfit then yes make all of her look glam and airbrush and I think you have done a good job wih this :-)

the reason I dont like to airbrush is not because I dont know how to do it (I do know how) lol its because I think every blemish a person has tells a story and every wrinkle just adds more detail to the story.. But again if I was to shoot a model glam style yes i would airbrush

I have found most woman wanted their images to be airbrushed no matter what age to hide who they really are. I am lucky to have great models that have zero fear of me showing flaws ;-)

I am familiar with the technique but only with an airbrush, not in software.  I agree pretty much wiht what has been said so far.    I would use it mostly for "defects" removal suitable for the genre of the image.