Human skin.
I think it is the most difficult thing to get looking truly natural.
We, as people, are just so highly attuned to what it should look like. We know what colour it should be and we are very highly attuned to any distortion of that colour or any colour casts across the range of tones on the skin. We also know what texture it should be. For us it is a key indicator of health what a person's skin looks like. Sloppy retouching can give a plastic sheen to skin that leaves a person looking ill or even simply unreal.
This is a large format portrait I took a while back of Sarah, who is both beautiful and awesome to work with. I am constrained, currently, by having to work with a rather cheap and cheerful scanner for my large format work. It is difficult, therefore, to get a good scan that preserves all the nuances of tone. As a result I struggled with this particular image for several days. The other versions were not terrible but they were all let down by poor skin tone (colour, texture or both).
I think I've cracked it with this version.
Feel free to disagree in the comments.
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