One of the involvement's of youth can include a blemished skin. Definitely the computer age has given us far more control for this type of correction than ever before available. Still - to do it right - individual tools, brushes and filters are necessary to correct varying conditions. Each blemish has to be attended to and while not overly difficult it remains time consumptive. Also, while the tools are quite marvelous, care must be accorded to the blending of the repairs so the skin doesn’t become clear “but lumpy.”

One of the more difficult challenges to approach in skin retouching is the problem with rosecia or blotchy areas of reddened skin. This often accompanies acne and requires additional blending using various color controls. All in all, skin reconstitution of this nature can take anywhere from 10-30 or more minutes.

Before

After

I enjoy going into a home or person’s environment as their surroundings can help in relaxing them, making it easier for natural expressions. And, as important, is the fact that ones environment also speaks strongly to who they are at this stage of life. When dealing with more than one person it is always a gamble in trying to get everyone’s expression to match. Another wonderful aspect of the digital realm is the ability to move heads, eyes and smiles from one image to another to help in “building” the perfect image. Of course there are problems associated with this as well as even slight movements can displace a head from background areas thus making its replacement very difficult to blend in properly without part of the “replacement” head revealing or blocking different aspects of the background.

In this image several different things were attended to. First I changed the boy’s head as I felt that his initial expression was too pasted in place. Secondly the fireplace needed a fire which I added. Next, the father requested that I darken his hair a bit along with some normal facial retouching. And finally, I added a vignette to again focus the attention of the viewer on the subjects.

The best image enhancement brings about a natural look that has you thinking - You’ve captured us perfectly or this is just the way I feel about our family. This is the goal; again, thanks to digital, many doors have been opened to allow for this reconstruction to become real.

Again, in the moment of capturing the right expression(s) some of the details escape us. In this case a strand of hair fell loose across the mothers left cheek. Initially you would think, well just paint over it with some of Photoshop’s tools to make it disappear. Unfortunately those tools need to “sample” from an area of skin that is problem free. Often adjacent or distant areas have a different type of lighting or the skin has a different texture/tone making simple replacement appear odd. In this case I worked with copying different layer selections adjacent to the hair strand, then pulling them over the problem portion while applying different edge softening procedures to aid it in looking natural. Lastly, it was necessary to apply a slight color correction just to this zone in the photograph, to again, have it appear as if that was the way it really was. A vignette around the subjects and some increased color saturation, helped bring the overall image to its final presentation.

While not so much a retouching or correction technique, the process of bringing related images together into a collage, can again place the proper interpretation of the session into the client’s final order. Today’s photography is no longer just some pieces of paper containing the likeness of the individual(s). Currently the professional photographer works hard at telling feelings, illustrating emotion and relationships through their imagery. Often this goes beyond individual images and is best interpreted through image blends, overlays and somehow multiple images as a single unique presentation.

Another hat for the photographer to wear and another aspect to consider in the growing compliment of products that photography now has to offer.