Macro shots are insanely hard to retouch — at least for me. They take me hours to do because I retouch each tiny hair, one by one. Then each pore, one by one. Then I redraw missing elements (like lipstick or a blown highlight). I find the closer you get the harder/longer it takes to retouch. And when you add in a cheap, dollar store lock that must have been painted blue by a blind monkey, you have your retouching cut out for you.
This is a shot of Jen, she's learning to be a photographer and retoucher. She had a copy of this image and wanted to edit it herself, but it was frustrating her so she asked me my "secrets." I had to show her in person the trick to doing it which is getting your healing/clone brush down to 1 to 2 pixels. In general the trick is getting the brush slighting bigger than the "imperfection" you are trying to fix. If it's a pore, then your brush is only slightly bigger than a pore. You can try to do a larger area, but you'll find that it usually blurs the area instead of leaving the skin texture in tact. While I think pores are natural, in a shot this close they are magnified to a level that makes them look like craters and people will be put off by them.
I spent three hours fixing things in this image and I could probably spend more, but I had to call it quits at some point. Just put the tablet pen down and walk away, I say to myself.
And for those interested, I shoot these close up face shots with extension tubes on a my macro lens (100mm/2.8). The lighting is my standard beauty lighting, two soft boxes on the right and left about 1 foot from the face at 45 degrees or so — it varies since lighting is an inexact science for me.
