Retouching Your Images

by William Lulow

A recent post on Linked In by a retouching house (post-processing) which was looking for clients, caught my attention. Retouching has always been an important part of the photographic process. I remember when I was just starting to think of doing photography full-time back in the early 1970s, that I always had to make sure I “spotted” my Black&White prints. It was one of the first things I learned about print-making. Dust always seemed to find its way to my negatives until I bought a special film drying cabinet and even then, dust specks were a problem. I learned how to spot them using Spotone’s basic toners, so it was certainly one of the steps involved in making good B&W prints.

I then learned how to build up tones on the faces of my early subjects, starting small with special colors and special brushes and using larger brushes to smooth out lines and facial wrinkles. I happened to be in San Francisco one day when a well-known portrait retoucher was giving a seminar about her subject. I ran down to sit in on her presentation and learned a lot about how to do this myself. For many years now, I have offered complete portrait services including retouching done to order with the client right here watching me.

One of the last jobs I had before officially opening my studio in 1980 was working full time for an advertising retoucher. This company employed around 30 or so retouchers whose job it was to make all images “camera ready” to be turned into regular print ads. These were regular employees most of whom lost their jobs when most retouching became digital. My job was to make print copies and even re-shoot some images that had been retouched.

I even remember a friend who had done some retouching for me earlier in my career and also did some work for Richard Avedon. When I visited him one day, there on his desk was an image of the famous model Lauren Hutton with a ton of marks on an acetate overlay, where my friend had to retouch. It taught me that the “perfect” was often far from it!

These days, I actually prefer doing the portrait retouching myself. One, because I have learned to do it quickly and efficiently over the years and two, because I build the computer time into the price of my portrait sittings. In the days of film, I often had to send negatives out to a retoucher especially when multiple copies had to be made. I could retouch on the print, but it was impossible to do on several prints. And, I never wanted to spend the time to learn how to retouch negatives because there was too much copy work involved. Back then, retouchers often had to make larger negatives from say medium format ones so that they had the bigger images from which to work. It was common to see some of my 2 1/4″ x 2 1/4″ negatives reproduced on 4×5 inch film or even on 8×10 inch size. If shots were made on 35mm film, they almost always needed to be enlarged if any work was needed on them. Also, retouching fees often were hundreds of dollars depending on what was required.

These days, given what I already know about retouching using Photoshop, I still like to get things as clean as I can in the camera rather than resort to having to retouch major parts of an image. But smoothing wrinkles and eliminating blemishes that would otherwise mar an image is still part of the drill, as they say. The “before” shot here was just before makeup and hair styling was done.

The one type of image I always send to a professional is a jewellery shot. Because of many intricate facets to rings and bracelets, etc. the pros know all the masking tricks to doing these quickly and for very little money.

Here’s an example that I sent out to be cleaned up and put on a pure white background:

The amount of work I would need to put in to retouching this would not be cost-efficient. So, here I let the pros do it. Just about everything else, I do myself. But here’s one that I did myself:

Most digital cameras today have a setting that automatically cleans the sensor upon startup and shutdown. So if you are shooting digitally, you almost never encounter dust specks. Still, it is always a good idea to check all images very carefully before you print them, send them to a printer or even to a client. Unless a client specifically requires all images from a shoot, not just ones I can edit, I always go over the ones I submit to make sure they are as clean as possible.

These days, accurate retouching really cannot be done with a mouse. The best tool is a tablet with a stylus so that you can really make good masks and get in there to small areas and control your strokes. This is the one I use. It is an older version of the Wacom Tablet and I find it easier to control than some of the newer ones that have pressure settings and even screens that allow retouching on them. If I were spending a great deal of time doing post-production work or for professional retouchers, the newer versions are better. For my uses, this has worked fine for a number of years:

Some of these older ones are available on eBay for very reasonable prices.The newer versions still cost hundreds of dollars.

Retouching is still a major part of what I do every day. And, as I mentioned, the fee for normal retouching is built into my daily or hourly rate.