FEATURED PROJECT:
 "Portrait Retouch "

I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly the most photogenic guy in the world. I tend to look my best when someone simply snaps a candid photo of me (you know, a photo of me chopping wood, sailing my 50 ft. yacht, shaking hands with the president, etc.), but when it comes to a posed photo, forget it. For some reason, this seems to be especially true with professional photographers. What is it with these guys? Why is it that a nine year old kid with a throw-away camera can usually capture a more natural pose than these professional tripod jockeys with all their fancy light meters, silvery umbrellas, and corny one-liners? Ha ha! Just kidding of course! I work closely with lots of great photographers who keep me busy retouching their photos. Please, no angry letters or telegrams, you capable and highly professional photographers who know how to take a joke! What a fun-loving and highly profitable segment of my clientele! Maybe it's the camera I should be upset with. They say that cameras don't lie, but why do they always have to tell the whole truth in such great detail? Even if you get a great photographer, a number of things can still spoil an otherwise good photo- a blemish on the skin, dark circles under the eyes, uneven skin tone, or where the cat scratched you the night before. Don't worry. There is hope. Let's take a look at a good example of some subtle yet effective portrait retouching techniques:

This is a photo of one of my favorite clients- Joe McGee. Joe is a funny, energetic, and intelligent guy who travels all over the United States putting on extremely entertaining parenting and marriage seminars. Now, Joe is a handsome fellow and actually quite photogenic, but everyone has their off days when they could use a bit of help. There really was nothing terribly wrong with this photo, but as you will see, it benefits greatly from some careful and understated retouching. If a portrait is retouched properly, nobody will be able to tell anything's been done at all. This is the mark of a skillful retoucher.

The first thing I normally do is a general survey of overall skin tone. In this case, there was some minor red splotchiness on the chin and nose. After careful blending and balancing of these areas, I gently faded out a few of those pesky forehead lines. To get realistic results, it is important to gently fade certain folds and wrinkles instead of erasing them all together. The eye and mouth areas of a face usually gain the most benefit from retouching, and that's what I did next. The shadows in the crow's feet around the eyes on this photo were especially harsh, and there were uncharacteristic dark discolorations under the eyes. I know Joe personally, and I know that he doesn't look like this in real life. Again, gently fading and subtle smoothing was called for. The same was true for the "smile lines" around the mouth. Final touches to the mouth areas included diminishing a mole and whitening the teeth a bit.

By this point, the photo was really looking great, but there was one last special touch it needed. For some reason, possibly the angle of his head in relation to his bodyposition, Joe's neck didn't look quite right. It was at a funny angle, or something, that made him look about 20 pounds too heavy. This was resolved by adjusting the position of his collar to a more realistic position. Click here to see a larger before and after version of this project.



Do you have any comments about this project or questions about photo re-touching? Please contact Nathan Hood at: feedback@nathanhood.net

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