Many hear the words “retouching” and their kinds go to the crazy things that magazines do to make models skinnier and perfect in an unrealistic way, but retouching comes in many forms. If you’ve hired a professional photographer who sells prints and heirloom products to put on your walls (not just the shoot and burn a disc photographer), it’s more than likely that your images will be retouched. I know that any image being printed in my studio goes through a round of retouching before heading to the lab… But what exactly that means can be confusing to many. What does retouching really entail? Well, for portrait photographers (my studio included) it means : •softening wrinkles •removing blemishes •evening out skin tones •removing any distracting elements from the photo •removing/toning down stray hairs •removing dry skin and blemishes from newborns • removing shiny/oily spots on skin This is a time intensive thing to do, so unless your images are going on the wall, and not going to be forgotten about on a disc in your drawer, it won’t “automatically “get done. The goal is not to make your skin plastic or make you look skinnier/taller/anything different than you naturally look. It’s meant to refine the image so that you see the best representation of yourself that you will be happy to showcase on the walls of your home. So what does it look like? Does it make that big a difference? Here’s some photo candy to show you the difference of : •a raw photo straight out of camera, to •a “processed ” photo which looks refined but isn’t retouched (what you’d get on a disc from your photographer), and •a retouched image final and ready for making you smile every time you pass it by.
keywords: photo retouching, professional photography services, Rebecca Ellison photography