[Cloud Strife]

here they are. its my first try so tell me how i did.

Before



After




so tell me what you think.

[Hasselhoff]

In the large picture the girl looks normal, then in the touched one, it looks like a barbie-doll, totally plasticy looking.

[Piersd]

hmmm, also looks like she's posessed :P

i don't know so much bout editing photos... so can't really give any cc :/

[CarlosJ]

hmm i'm no photo editing expert but purely from a realistic graphical point of view the first "after" photo looks like she has the nose of shrek, born with her eyes abnormally far away from each other, and has either been smoking pot for about the last 2 days continuously or a zombies just taken her soul. also part of her top lip looks like its been chewed away so now the contrast between her lips looks strange and thus the teeth dont fit.
now i know this may come across as slightly harsh but im just being honest(its the best way to improve), the first picture didn't need any retouching, and the retouching done in the second makes her look worse. i dont think this is your fault, i think its the fact you picked a stock that really didnt need much work done to it, and then its really hard to improve an already good looking picture, improving something already good sometiems makes it bad, and in this case it looks like a barbie doll because of the unceccesary retouching.

im sort of confused what the picture of that girl from pirates of the carbiean is there for though, the girls look slightly similar if thats it:S i think that edit is better, because alot of the changes are very subtle. you have to look hard to realise her eyes have changed colour, her teeth are whitened, her cheecks arent so red, her hair has more colour in it, eyebrows have been edited slightly, also youve removed some shadows from facial features i.e. nose.
now for me thats quite a good edit as its not clear at first what youve done, showing the "after" picture of the girl from PTC could be easily believed as real. the "after" photo of the first girl is so obviously retouched in certain places it takes away from the realism.
so overall no1, prefer "before" as the edit just looks too edited, no2 "after" is a good edit, retouching is well hidden and because of this doesn't create suspicison to an edit, i'd say keep it simple like no2 and the little changes make the most difference.

[Bob_Magic]

Very subtle hard to notice changes except for in the large pic, the girl looks like she's been hypnotized - and the small one looks a little less red.
I'm not quite sure which kind of effect your where going for with these... trying to upgrade image quality perhaps?