POST PRODUCTION / RETOUCHING

Postproduction/retouching continues to shape & define the artistic interpretation of how an image looks, and helps you get the best impact from using the images for your brand campaign.

For quality control, all the postproduction/retouching is handled personally in-house: editing and retouching with full overview of the project and your desired image usage and goals in mind.

My artistic considerations in lighting and composition during the image capture; combined with the equally the important care and attention and artistic choices that goes into my Retouching, produces the unique and high quality finished feel of photographic imagery I provide for you.

Do you want vivid images that gain attention?

My workflow allows further creative decisions/direction in the postproduction (sometimes subtle, sometimes dramatic).  Retouching can go far beyond:

getting rid of blemishes’ for perfect skin, or ‘nipping a dress size’ and digitally ‘ironing out creases in fabric’.

Retouching is an essential step of my style and the high standard imagery I produce for my clients.

My postproduction/retouching work-flow can include change of lighting, colours and more; to take the image in a new direction.  The mood or feel the viewer has towards an image can be taken in different directions by even subtle colour shifts.

How the image file is processed & retouched is an essential part of the process of producing high quality imagery.  By choosing to shoot image capture in RAW image file format, it allows me as a Retoucher to have greatest amount of image data to work with, giving me most creative control in the how the image file is processed and make the most of it.

What happens after my photo-shoot? / What is your editing/image selection process?

The hundreds of RAW images are individually reviewed on a large monitor, so I can see all the finer details.

During this process I determine each image’s potential use, and make artistic considerations on the lighting/composition/mood of the image, weeding out weaker shots.   I’m a big deleter, keeping only the great shots that work well to tell the story, and finding the images that are going to achieve the goals of your brand and open doors for you.

This meticulous process saves my clients’ time, as they are presented with a manageable selection of the strongest images, from which to make their final choice.  Once the images are selected to take forward, then comes the high-end Retouching.

What kind of retouching work do you do to an image?

My images are digitally retouched at 100% of the image file size; often zooming into 400% to adjust the smallest details, which then adds up to big overall differences in the tone/quality of the image – as they say ‘the Devil’s in the details’.

While each project and image is different, my core retouching principles are that:

  • On headshots/portraits/celebrities my aim is to make you look like you on a great day.  Permanent features (e.g. scars, moles) are left unretouched, unless asked to remove.
  • In fashion/beauty retouching, where the clothes/style/story is often far more important than maintaining the exact representation of the model’s features I will go further to create aspirational images to promote your collection/product/portfolio.

Some of the common elements of my retouching are:

  • colour balance
  • contrast saturation/ desaturation
  • skin/pore work (individually removing cellulite, spots, stretch marks, large pores)
  • hair (removing fly-aways)
  • amending shape
  • whitening eyes/teeth subtle
  • selective sharpening (eg on the eyes to focus attention)
  • dodging out & burning in light

Depending on the image/project retouching can also include

  • selective colour adjustments
  • body shape (slimming, extending lengths, increasing and decreasing a size etc.)
  • face reshaping (reshaping/resizing/straightening/and more)
  • clothes:
  • removing creases/dust/stray threads,
  • increasing/decreasing highlights and folds of material, changing shape
  • Adding/removing elements of the image
  • Swapping/blending elements with other images (eg a head from one shot, added to the body of another)
  • occasionally even adding a few eyelashes!

It’s these sorts of subtle things, that you’d never know unless I told you, add up together to the quality of photography I’m happy share with the world. 🙂

As you can see great care is taken with the images so that clients are delighted with the final results and the attention/feedback gained using the images.

Thank you for taking the time to find out about my postproduction/retouching workflow.  :-)

 

To view a selection of low resolution retouching sample images:

Click the minus button at the bottom of the text

(* view on a desktop/laptop)