It’s been a busy week. The makeup artist i worked with last week needed about 40 images touched up ASAP for her new portfolio. We talked about that way back when we were planning the shoot so I was expecting it. It took me about an hour to touch up each image to a satisfactory amount. I can’t imagine how long it would’ve taken if I didn’t have my Wacom tablet. I don’t think I would ever want to intensely process beauty shots again without a tablet. Anyways… editing an image is two major processes for me…. Post Processing and Touch Up.

Post Processing includes correcting the photo as a whole. That means cropping and adjusting things such as exposure, white balance, contrast, hue/saturation etc.

Touch Up involves making the model look flawless. That usually starts with removing all blemishes from the skin, lifting shadows under the eyelids/nose/lips, evening out skin tones, accentuating cheek bones, making peoples’ heads skinnier, pulling their ears closer to their heads and so on and so on. The list doesn’t end for making someone look “ideal”.

Here’s a before & after example:

It’s really not that hard but its very tedious. The hardest part is keeping the texture of the skin intact without making it look like plastic. Just look in Maxim or FHM for an example of a model that’s been airbrushed to look like a plastic doll.

This is one of my favorite images from last week. Everything really came together here. The model was great, her wardrobe was awesome, and the location really worked for it all. I knew right away, before even having taken any shots yet, that the images would have a nice print feel to them. You know that sales catalog or magazine ad look? When it came time to process these images, I didn’t want to change anything. I wanted to preserve how good it looked right out of the camera. I basically only pulled the contrast back to soften up the image overall. I look back at my old photos all the time and try to notice my own trends. I noticed that I liked really contrasty images so I started pulling that back and experimenting. It really works for this image.

It seems like so many people are over processing images now that I’ve grown to appreciate keeping things really simple. I got really sick of looking at photos that have been cross processed for that old vintage film look. I admit, I used to do it myself, and i was a big fan of it, but i feel like its time to move on. There’s some really great photographers on the west coast that got into this trend. I really feel like its hurt their work. I would much rather see your image as it was shot than after you’ve made it all purple and blue.