PROFESSIONAL RETOUCHING:
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Every *purchased* image undergoes retouching to remove blemishes, mistakes and other unsightly things. Many people refer to this as Photoshopping an image, or a decade ago I heard the term “airbrushing” a lot. Some budding photographers say “editing”. The point is, the images are cleaned up… Much like how you run the vacuum before your in-laws come for a visit.
So what blemishes would be addressed in retouching?…
If you would clean it up with makeup or a bath, that’s what needs retouching! Snot, zits, acne, cradle cap, stork bites, flaky skin and bruises are obvious. Crusties anywhere on the skin, red blotches, dark circles, eye boogers, and stray fly-away hairs are even more common. Adults, even when they’re still young, have age spots and wrinkles. …
The topic of wrinkles starts to get tricky. Wrinkles begin to cross over from “blemish” to “character.” I don’t ever remove character. If I remove a person’s character, they quickly become “not them self,” and then I have over-retouched an image. Over-retouching is always worse than under-retouching. So many of these things are purely a judgement call. This is a definite instance where I would ask, “would I want this “fixed” if it were me or my child or my husband?”
I am a plastic surgeon! HA!
There is also “plastic surgery” and “doing laundry”… ‘Why YES, I’m happy to shrink your love handle,’ and ‘of course I’ll remove the spit-up from your shirt.’ ‘Dirt on you son’s khaki pants? no problem!!!’ If you ever have a question about what I might address, don’t hesitate to ask!
One thing retouching is NOT… Professionally retouching an image dose NOT mean running an Action on a batch of images. These are Photoshop presets that photographers can buy that do an auto-smoothing of skin. Generally speaking it looks pretty fantastic on a screen. But get these images in print, and you see the gross inadequacies. skin-smoothing quickly begins to look embarrassingly like you are now fake, plastic dolls. Yikes.
Editing is also not the same as retouching…. “Editing” is not an agreed upon term. For me, editing means I cull the 200-400 shot images down to only the best, unique, 30-60 images. I then make sure all the images have the correct exposure and color balance (that’s light/dark and warm/cool), and I also crop. Cropping means cutting out the irrelevant areas of the image so the eventual print is well-composed. From one photographer to another, “editing” can mean different things, so it’s a good idea to ask when they mean by the term.
Bottom line… As a professional, I make the continual judgement call to “help” what actually NEEDS to be helped. Everything else, I leave it alone. Less is more.
