on the job: what is digital retouching? — Melissa Kelly Photography

Portrait of the owners of Fresco Foods out front of their offices in Hatfield, PA. This is the 'after' image, showing the useful ways digital retouching can help clean up a photograph.

I have said it plenty of times before, I love getting to go into businesses and universities to see what makes them tick. Some of the time those locations are tailor made for photos — like the last post — where no expert retouching was needed. But many times, a shoot location by necessity has to be in a spot that wasn’t built with photographers in mind. Sometimes there are eyesores and distractions that need to be dealt with either in camera or in post production.

It turns out retouching isn’t just for faces and magazines!

Everyone who has ever tried taking a photo (so … everyone) knows what I’m talking about. You have the perfect light and your subject looks great, but something’s just not right. There’s either a giant pole or a brightly colored object or… something... just ruining an otherwise ideal setup. That’s where expert retouching for photos comes in handy.

Now, the term ‘retouching’ can kind of be hard to define. Most people think of retouching as simply being a digital face lift. And it certainly can be — but it’s also so much more. A skilled retoucher can elevate your image from a snapshot to a showpiece. Take the image above from my marketing shoot with Fresco Foods last fall. Looks pretty good, right?

Well, check out the original image below:

Portrait of the owners of Fresco Foods out front of their offices in Hatfield, PA. This is the 'before' image, to show how the image above this looked before digital retouching..

When scouting the location, I discovered it would present us with some frustrating obstacles. After all, we were in an industrial park, not a formal garden. The area was littered with poles, wires, and all kinds of signage. We knew going into our shoot that we were going to have to clean up the final images in Photoshop.

The keyword in that last sentence is ‘we,’ because retouching should always be a ‘we’ process. In a balanced mix between subject and photographer/retoucher, all parties have to be on board with what can and should be done to an image.

And that conversation should ideally happen BEFORE the photo shoot. Because not all retouching can simply be done with what you have after the fact. Things like taking street signs out and cleaning up hair and skin blemishes, sure. But if you wanted to replace something larger, there might need to be more done DURING the shoot in order to pull that off.

So, if you are having a photo shoot soon, chat with your photographer about the expectations for your final images. Find out what amount of retouching is reasonable for your project. Especially if you would like to work in a certain location but are unsure how it will photograph. Make a game plan with your photographer for the session, and for the process after. Discussing things beforehand will make the whole process much easier (and probably less costly)!

Here are some more before and after photos from that Fresco Foods shoot. Can you spot the changes?