As I’ve mentioned before, retouching is nothing new in photography. Cameras capture something close to what our eyes see, but sometimes not exactly quite right and we work in post to add that “human” quality. Or sometimes, we are trying to make up for user error; perhaps our exposure was off (too light or too dark) or maybe our white balance (the photo is too “cool” or too “warm”). Other times, we retouch because it makes the subject more…palatable. Let me explain.
On many occasions, I’ve been asked by my friends to take headshots for them. Some are actors looking to break into New York City’s theatre world while others are simply professionals in need of a photo for business purposes. None of these friends have explicitly asked me to retouch their photos, but I have gone ahead and added some “digital makeup” to augment their photos. I believe a headshot should show the person in their best possible light. If I can do something to help that, I will.
That said, I think there’s a very clear line here. People should still look like themselves. Anything I could potentially do with makeup — mask a pimple, smooth and even out skin tone, reduce shine — I’m comfortable doing in retouching. Most of my friends who have received my retouched photos do not realize they’ve been retouched. The idea here is to be subtle lest people look at their photos and think, “Gee, do I really look like that?!”
To drive home this point, I have a couple examples of helpful retouching and one example that, to me, is clearly distortion.
Example No. 1 of Retouching - Slight Retouching
The above is a perfect example of very slight retouching. Personally, I didn’t think this example needed any retouching (our Anthony has some pretty amazing skin!). But I did a very slight adjustment of the skin under Anthony’s left eye (right side of the frame) to straighten out a wrinkle. Otherwise, the photos are pretty much identical.
Example No. 2 of Retouching - More Retouched
The above is a photo I took for one of my actor friends. While I tend to glance over the imperfections of my friends (because I love them dearly!), the camera is not always as generous. In post-processing this photo, I noticed that he had a few small blemishes so I faded those away. I also removed shine and smoothed out his complexion using the post-processing tools available to me since I didn’t have a makeup artist on hand that day to prep his skin for the camera. Finally, I sharpened the focus around his eyes and brightened up the photo considerably to highlight his features. Though this sounds like a lot, the results are fairly subtle in my opinion.
Example No. 3 of Retouching - Overly Retouched
Finally, the above is a photo of myself. I took a self-portrait a couple of years ago that I felt turned out pretty well and accurately represents me (though my highlights have faded, I still wear my hair this way and still have the same glasses — I guess it might be time for a new pair!). The photo above at left is what I currently use as my headshot. The retouched version at right is, quite frankly, an abomination. It’s starting to look like a different girl, not me.
The first big thing I changed here are my eyes. If you’ve met me, you know that I have very dark eyes; and if you’ve seen my baby pictures, that’s something about me that has always been true. In this retouched photo, I lightened my eyes considerably so that it looks like I might have hazel eyes (which I don’t). And speaking of eyes, I also altered the color of my glasses. Not only is this untrue but glasses say something about a person. I’ve had pink, red, purple, brown glasses, but never green. I think that says something about my preferences and the kind of person I am (I’m bold, but not quite so bold as to wear green glasses most days of the week!).
In addition, I’ve also gone ahead and removed all the blemishes on my forehead (trust me, those are still on my current forehead!) and chin and smoothed out the skin tone. That would have been okay but then I decided to take it a step further and darken my skin tone — a digital base tan, if you will. While I tan fairly well and tend to take on color during the summer, most of the year I’m pretty pasty and the photo on the left is pretty accurate to what my skin normally looks like. I then did the inverse for my hair. Instead of darkening, I lightened. While I’ve experimented with hair color (there was a time Anthony called me “fire head” due to my hair matching the color of a lit match!), I can’t say it has ever looked that shade of brown. The sun might brighten somewhat, but again, my hair is fairly dark brown and aside from highlights every so often (when I get bored and forget how annoying those are to grow out), I really don’t do much to my hair’s natural color.
As a result of all this retouching, the picture of me on the right really doesn’t look much like me at all. It’s a distortion. She could be my alter-ego; a sort of Bizarro Jen from another dimension. That said, I think it’s sad how often people measure themselves up against distortions as much of what we see in beauty and fashion magazines is artificial in this way. Much like it would be unrealistic for me to compare my hair to that of a Barbie doll, it is unrealistic for me to compare my skin to that of a celebrity I see in a Lancome ad. More often than not, she’s not born with and it’s probably not Maybelline — it’s Photoshop.
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