Retouching - what difference does it make?

Here is a quick primer on photo retouching.  Remember, doctoring of photographs has been around for years.  With photoshop, however, the possibilities are at a new level.


In general, digital image files that see the light of day are in one of three  states - unretouched (or straight out of the camera), retouched, or enhanced.


Unretouched images,  for those who shoot with jpegs, are images where the CAMERA makes the the decisions based on the settings made in the camera.


Retouched photographs include  some post-processing changes to the digital file made in an image editing program such as Photoshop.  (Yawn - don't fall asleep yet - there's more!)


For portraits, this includes removing or modifying blemishes, wrinkles, reflections, unwanted shadows, stray hairs, red-eye, etc.  It may include smoothing skin and some dodging/burning, whitening teeth, brightening eyes.  My barometer for retouching is to keep people looking natural AND like they've had a great night's sleep.


In this photograph, most of the retouching involved smoothing the shadows on the left side of this beautiful bride's face.   I also removed the color cast on her dress, brought out the detail of her veil, smoothed some of the shadows on her arm, and brightened the photo a touch.  

Enhanced photographs include some further interpretation of the photograph using an image editing program such as photoshop.   Here are a few examples of enhanced photographs.  Which interpretation works best for you?

Black and white conversation and partial color are additional possibilities.

At a most basic level, the original digital file is the foundation of the photograph.  The retouching and image enhancement are what make the photograph sing.