Hi Will,
Impressive pictures. I'm proud to see this! These are indeed a sign of progress. I like the lighting. You must be charming the lady. In fact this is among the best such pictures anyone has posted who does not a contract with a major client such as Lancome, Vogue or the like. So that's you and your nice work. Now the finishing of the picture.
At first I was really impressed and thought this was a great time saver. However, so far not the right match for your work. The guy who helped with the retouch in photoshop has a lot of talent but not enough care for prime time. The polishing of the skin is quick, not careful and incomplete. As an example that will be immediately obvious, look at the right arm in the second picture. There's a rim of untouched darker skin. Worse, this is where the light should be greatest.
However, you have raised a great subject: use of services to deal with skin issues and so forth. It's not necessarily efficient use of one's time to do this work, although artistically, one can get great satisfaction doing this. However, if one is doing this for a living, you get someone to do it with your own specific directions, requirement and look.
Asher
