Retouching, and re-retouching

The undeniable plague of the digital workflow is the endless editing and re-editing process. It can be hard to decide that something is 'finished' when you can always come back and launch photoshop again. I say all this because I'm guilty. Just thought I would let you in on the process for one of my portrait retouches:


Would you believe that the underexposed, off-color image on the left is what came out of the camera that evening! I remember being frustrated with myself for not exposing Amber better on this shoot and I knew I was going to take a lot of work to get these images to resemble the way I remember things looking.

The image in the middle is the edit I made back in 2008. It took me probably three hours and I was never quite satisfied, yet I've still used it in my portfolio since.

The image on the right is an edit I did yesterday. It took me only ten minutes and I feel certain aspects are improvements. The elimination of so much skin detail makes it look a little more plastic which I usually try to avoid. I might prefer somewhat of a compromise between #2 and #3.

There is a lot to be said for 'straight out of the camera' photographs, but unless it's specifically stated, you better believe we're all using photoshop :)