Retouch

We had a portrait shooting this week that had to have something to do with sailing. So we organized a sailboat, nice costumes and two hot chicks.

Why chicks? Honestly, chicks always add to a picture And a shooting is just so much more fun that way.

Below you can see a breakdown of the editing involved in the pictures, I am on a strict time schedule at the moment, so I worked straight forward. It took about 1 hour.

Some of you may already have spotted it: There is a new category, called "Retouch".

re⋅touch
–verb (used with object)
1. to improve with new touches, highlights, or the like; touch up or rework, as a painting or makeup.
2. Photography. to alter (a negative or positive) after development by adding or removing lines, lightening areas, etc., with a pencil, brush, or knife.
3. to dye, tint, or bleach (a new growth of hair) to match or blend with the color of an earlier and previously dyed growth.

Almost every picture you see nowadays in magazines or in adverts are digitally altered on a computer.
Sometimes they go much too far, see Photoshop Disasters.

Because I got asked by some people if and how much I retouch my pictures on the computer, I thought it might be interesting to some to see the whole process.
In this category I will show the changes made step by step.

0: Out of Camera
This what the picture looks straight out of the camera.

1: White Balance + Color Correction + Contrast
A lot of steps I know, next time I will try to split them more.
But this is what I actually won't consider retouch, it's how the scene looked in my eyes when I shot it.
White Balance and Color Correction are needed to make her nice hair look like it does in real live.
About 70% of my pictures stop here. Most of the time this suffices.

2: Local Color Adjustment
This is the first step that alters the image in my perception.
The blue of her eyes that we lost when we corrected her hair was brought back.
I also added red to her lips to create a contrast to her red skin and hair.

3: Skin Imperfections + Eyelashes
I did this step only to show what can be done. With such nice skin it is absolutely unnecessary in my opinion.
But many would go much further, for me this would destroy much of the effect an image can have.

4: Selective Sharpening
Here I sharpened her hair, while leaving her skin as it is. You won't see much difference in a pretty small resolution as for web. This is much more notable when you print this picture large.

If you want to compare the first and the last picture in higher resolution, I propose you check them out on flickr