Sometimes people will ask me to "edit" their photos in photoshop. The words "edit" and "re-touch" are words that have caused some confusion when I talk to clients. They are often interchanged and thus many people think they mean the same thing. I, therefore, would like to clarify a little bit about what these words mean, what they include and why I do or do not do certain things with my photography.
If you have ever looked at all the credits in a magazine you may have seen somebody who is the photo editor. Their job is to decide which photos actually make it into the final cut and which ones do not. The edit out everything that doesn't hold up to certain standards. After every photo session that I do with clients I edit the photos. Don't worry, I still like to give my clients the freedom to choose between different poses, etc. What I edit out is anything that is slightly out of focus, or not composed as well as I would like. Although it would be nice if I could make every single shot perfect it just doesn't happen. Even the best photographers edit out certain shots. I base all of my editing decisions on technical factors.
Once I am done editing out photos I begin to re-touch them. Sometimes when people get their photos back they think that I skipped this part. They think that every photo should have super high contrast or unrealistic colors. Sometimes changes like that are okay but most of the time they are inappropriate. Re-touching includes subtle corrections and changes to things like color, contrast, blur, and might even include some minor changes to skin tones and highlights, eye color, or skin enhancement. If someone has some minor acne or a scratch I will smoothen it out but I will not change the way someone looks. The point of a photograph is to capture a person's personality and appearance, not to make them look like someone else. Because these changes are so subtle some people don't actually notice them. This doesn't mean that I have short changed them. It just means that I have used discretion in re-touching. Some might even argue that the most difficult part of re-touching is knowing when to stop.
Sometimes it becomes necessary to exchange somebody's eyes from one photo onto their face from another photo and other such extreme changes. This should only be done in extreme situation (usually a group shot in which somebody refuses to cooperate). Food scientists have gotten processed tofu to taste similar to ground beef but there is always something different about it. It is impossible to duplicate exactly. The same is true for an extremely re-touched photograph. That head that was photoshopped onto the same person's body from a different picture will always look a little unnatural... because it is.
