Retouch a Photo without Manipulating the Basic Elements

There is a stark difference between retouching and manipulating. When an editor tries to retouch a photo he is only improving the visual element in the image. He does not manipulate any other areas or make a complete change from the original.

A super model may look gorgeous on the magazine cover. But in reality is the appearance in contrast? The new rule for the ever-engaging print media is not to change the shapes or the body or the face. A few elements can be cleaned or brushed upon with basic retouching. But a complete transformation is a complete no. This no nonsense attitude works well even with the image editors. They know their limits. This is heartening news as retouching of models photos for fashion mugs, advertising and glamour photography has become stricter. Content wise the retouching is limited to simple techniques of airbrushing and use of simple layer blends. It basically uplifts and enhances the visuals. Digital cameras have simplified the retouch process. And it is also true that most editors get requests for retouching than any plastic surgeons.

These days the requests for personal photo retouch services are more in demand. As people show off their tanned skin during holidays they like to flaunt their pictures in social websites. And the users are turning to professionals for the retouch job. Let’s face it about 65% of the photos shot are those of people who have some skin imperfections that need to be corrected. These range from wrinkles, pimples, freckles, and uneven tan and facial blemish. Retouching is not dangerous, as it does not alter any shape or size. Such a modification is referred manipulation. It is also done for certain photos where there is damage done or if the photos are old and need to be restored. When it comes to retouch a photo the parameters are different. A photo that is retouched can appear on a dating website. It is harmless as when the two people meet on the basis of their picture profiles they are not shocked at the change. They have not deceived each other. This is one of the main reasons why retouching is far more acceptable than manipulation. The art of retouching only enhances the visual elements. And that is perfectly acceptable to everyone.

Why manipulation cannot score over retouching is that when the body shape or face shape is modified then there is a danger. It can be tantamount to cheating. Image editors also prefer to do the work within limits. There is no creativity when a straight manipulation is done. In fact subtle retouching is better as it improves the quality of the final image. Most people prefer to appear better than they actually are and there is no harm with that. Now that digital retouching jobs are common it is best to avail of these services. The skills of the talented editors are better than doing it yourself. Simple retouching may mean just changing the background color. A minor difference is all it takes to bring the picture alive. There are techniques like dodge and burn that add to the retouch content. This way fixing is easier. There is no guilt involved and there is creative satisfaction. And it also makes the client smile.

Photoshop Retouching with Competent Tools

Retouching is an art of adding simple effects over an existing photo to augment the overall impact.  Photoshop is most preferred tool for retouching for its competent tools that can sculpt the creativity out.

Photoshop is boon to image editors across the globe. Image retouching is done in varied grounds and the application is vast ranging from personal portraits to political propaganda. The actual results of retouching will end up in enhanced beauty of the image. Let’s have a bird’s eye view of professional approach to this effect.

Digital nose jobs:

The trend of doing cosmetic procedures by A-list models has popularized digital nose jobs. Simple steps of marquee tool and masking effect do this. By using the marquee tool, the area which has to be worked upon will be clipped and done with the required changes i.e. increasing / decreasing sizes or changing the skin tone etc. Once the required changes are done, the modified body part is taken back to the source image and placed back. In order to reduce the size of the nose masking effect can be used to make the upper lips visible and thereby shortening the nose size. Photoshop retouching can be done with other body parts like hips, thighs, and calf and bicep muscles. It is up to the imagination and discretion of the customer as which body part has to be digitally worked upon. It is vital to make sure the angle in which the photo, it should focus the area that has to be processed.

The clone stamp:

There is clone stamp tool in image editing software like Photoshop. Photoshop retouching can effectively achieved by cloning part or complete portion of any entity in that image. Repairing photos include distorted digital images as well as historical snap photographs. For snaps, lay it as flat as possible and scan it. Place a white paper as the background and scan. Once the image is converted to digital image format, use the clone stamp to erase of the distortion in the portion that doesn’t contain the main subject. These distortions could have been caused due to wear and tear. Press the ALT key and click on the place where there is no distortion.  The software will use the area surrounding the point where the mouse is clicked to create the clone in the affected area. Drag the mouse over the affected area. The software will replace the damaged part with undistorted portion.

Representations:

Hardcore implementation of retouching is done in the field of model photography manipulations. The models are being captured in high end digital camera and then fed into computers to make the necessary changes in the face of the subject to make it attractive. Retouching is implied to remove scar, tans, pores and other undesirable points from the face. It is now need of the hour for a model portfolio to be “photoshopped”. Retouching need more patience and equal measure of skill. This technique can be used to correct facial anomalies, damages caused in the bygone photo snaps, create copies of same entity multiple times, and erase an entity off from the image etc. The art of Photoshop retouching is a great gain for digital image editors. Well, with various features retouch remains a blessing for image editing.

Retouching My Portrait – Is Not a Flash in the Pan!

Portraits have a longer history like photography itself. This shows the interest of humans getting their images live with time. The art of portrait have long grown and the enhancements have evolved through technologies.

Portraits started as a royal service traveled with time and technology and became a common activity. With the invasion of digital cameras, capturing portraits is as simple as that. High-end cameras have capture settings like face detection to take portraits with more accuracy. Today retouching is not a flash in the pan.

Close look:

Retouching portraits require immense skill. This is because the editor has to change very minute details to look the image different. The responsibility is more on the shoulders of the artist as the customer feels “retouching my portrait is enhancing my facial attributes”.  Apart from the regular skin tone, one needs to give close look at eyebrows, dark shades below the eyes, eyelashes, lips and other microscopic details of the face. Retouching such parameters will boost the beauty of the face.  One needs to understand the amount of light that falls on the subject, and reduce it at desired scenarios. Reducing the light on the face doesn’t darken the image, instead increases glow when applied with hue and saturation slider.

Light and Flash:

This competitive scenario will force the photographer to use high-end cameras. The snapper will have his camera settings done to capture the face of his subject with highest clarity. To achieve this, it is important to make the background blur and thereby increasing the sharpness of his subject. The shutterbug will need to take a great care in lighting effects and flash settings. The camera should flash only when necessary. The photo will be pleasant, if natural light is used in maximum. Setting the light for a photo is just another art. It should be done with excellence to make it more adorable than an amateur capture.

Contrast the Backdrop:

The foreground entity will look finer when the backdrop contrasting. Handle dodge and blur tool to wipe off the sharpness in the background. Try to lessen the striking colors at the back settings in the back settings to hike the charm of the portrait. This is a mandate technique used along with other procedures while retouching the portrait. Retouching my portrait involves a lot of input from my end as well as from the editor’s perspective. The combined inputs will narrow down to the best possible correction and lead to the spangled output.

Cleaning the skin and retouching hair property will make the portrait fantabulous. The hair color can be treated in a way that it looks blending with the skin tone. The black spot on the face must be erased off using clone tool and skin color should be maintained even across the face. Brightening up of eyes and teeth will add more color to the photo. Retouching my portrait is not complete without adding twinkling effects to my eyes. The editor must take immense effect to zoom in and implant effects into the lens in the eyes. The artist should work on the color of teeth. It is not necessarily to be bright white; however various shades of white will do the job. Snap a shot and give it a try. The social networking site needs a new profile picture!!

Retouch Photos and Reincarnate Their Personality

At times, a normal picture will never strike any attention; retouch photos and it will give a piquant punch and make them more prominent. Retouching is undoubtedly treated as a technique to reincarnate the photos personality.

Digital captures are always stunning when captured at effective lighting and angles. This, of course, is not enough in the new era of digital manipulations. One can spend worthy time in retouching obligatory areas of the image to make it look more focused depending on the content. Let’s peep into some of the techniques that create magic in not so exquisite photos.

Thump the spirit:

There are few images that are very motivational in their ingredients. Photos like the winning shot of a high-tension final match can bring mixed emotions among the supporters. When such captures are treated with special retouch methods, they will look legend and unforgettable among enthusiasts. Retouch photos with simple Photoshop techniques like stroke and outer glow will create an illusion that the sporting hero is powered with magical influence.

It requires an efficient digital device to capture a sporting event. The output should be void of shaggy trails and blurred portion. Concentrate now on the protagonist of the photo and draw the path with the pen tool covering the athletic act of him. Clip him off and paste in a new layer to add the desired effect. Apply stroke effect with an apt color that can match the background contrastingly. Use the outer glow to enhance the colored border of the athlete. Decorate more with blurring parameters and make him a super hero. An outer glowing effect spiced with blur will create a thump in the image.

Digital Flashback:

Retro images have a cult following. People in general have an obsession towards period photos. Those pictures talk a lot about the time and culture in which they were captured. Use the hue and saturation effect to increase the retro color contents. Slide the saturation bar to make the image look more like a single colored either beige or grayscale to get the desired effect. Retouch the photos with more filters of brushes and light effects to make photo look retro and legendary.  

Color precision:

Retouch photos to create new and vibrant colors that actually not captured in the photos. The technique is used to remove the inglorious look and spice up the image with sparkling toppings. Does the color of the t-shirt bringing down the feel of the photo? Never mind, just change it to a beautiful shade with photo retouching. Use hue and saturation slides to change the color of desired choice. Make use of the color balance to recommend a vivacious color of choice. Use brightness to hide other portions of image and mask it with the source photo.

Retouch photos to achieve scores of effects. From colors to lights, from futuristic to retro and what not? Imagine and unleash with high-end tools to accomplish the dreams. Invent jaw-dropping effects, as image editing is not bound to rules but to innovations.  The superiority of the photo lies in the hands of editor who chooses the right effect to add the zest to the illustrations. Glanced some of the many retouch effects; one can’t deny that retouching is reincarnation of the photo.

Skin Retouch - Unglamorous Job for Glamorous Faces

The skin retouch is the one of the most requested during any photo shoot. The skin retouch can be in the form of removal of acnes, freckles, or any random spots on the model or person's skin.

Photoshop provides the Healing Brush tool, which is a powerful and simple tool that can be used to remove imperfections in the skin. The tool is present in almost all version of the Photoshop. There are a number of options available for the use of this tool. To select the healing brush tool, select the image, which looks like a bandage icon in the toolbox. The tool can also be selected by using the shortcut key by pressing the J key on the keyboard. When the icon is clicked a number of options are revealed, including the spot healing brush tool, the healing brush tool, and patch tool.

The spot healing brush is the simplest of the three options and is used to take care of small imperfections in which there is an even area around the mark. The tool takes the sample from the pixels around the mark and matches it in terms of texture, lighting and the tone. After selecting the tool select a brush that is larger than the mark and simply click on the mark to remove it. For large marks or scratches, the brush can be dragged across the area.

The second tool, the healing brush allows the user to select the sample from which the marks can be blended to remove them. In this tool the user can select a sample or a preset pattern to remove unwanted marks. For example, there is an image in which there is fine detail of the imperfections. Now to remove this imperfection, first select the healing brush tool and press alt and click to select the source sample. Make sure to select the sample area that closely resembles the area around the imperfections. The things to look in while selecting the source include the texture, the tone and the shadows. After finalizing the source, click on the imperfections similar to the previous method used in the first tool. That’s it after some trail and errors, the mark will be completely removed.

The third and the most complicated one is the patch tool. This tool can be defined as a combination of the lasso tool and healing brush. The tool is good for correcting large areas of the image. The healing brush allows correction in the image based on the source or a pre-set pattern; the patch tool provides a number of different options. One of the most used one is to select the area of imperfection by dragging around it, similar to the lasso tool. While doing this, make sure to select the Source Mode in the option bar. Now drag the selection to an area where Photoshop can blend the imperfection and release. Like other Photoshop techniques, correcting marks using the tools need a lot of patience and attention to details.

Tricks to Beautify with Photo Correction Services

Photo correction services are said to be a blessing to the photo addicts as they help you out in looking what you are not but you intend to.

When you click a photo of your favorite person, place or scene it is not necessary that it turn out to be as you wished. Sometimes, the lights might play a prank with you, sometimes, the contrast is too much or too less to adjust while clicking the snap and at the same time, once you are done with clicking, you might find something unwanted or annoying in the picture. The irony arises when you are not able to go back and remove these kinds of irregularities in your snapshot, and to solve this kind of irony the photo correction services knock at your door.

These services are not the orthodox ones like someone delivering them to you just like a courier service does rather them are accessible through different websites and software, accordingly these ways enable these services to be approached both online and offline.

There is a lot of software available which provide photo correction services on one simple click; Adobe Photoshop® Picasa by Google and then Microsoft Photo Editor (attached and annexed with the operating system only) are few major players among them.

One genuine question would arise at this stage that how a photo is corrected by these services? Well, the answer lies with the fact that first and foremost it depends upon the photograph and the concerned portion, which need to be corrected.

Sometimes, it happen that the face of subject has appeared to be dark in the photograph, what we can have from these correction services that it would brighten the face and accordingly adding a glow to the face. In cases where the face of the subject is good enough but the background is pinching a nail, then that background can easily be changed/ removed partially or totally.

Deleting or adding certain colors in the photograph are other tricks we find while beautifying with these services. The effect of such a beautification is that it can completely change the appearance and impression of the subject of the photograph.

At home, I have an old photograph of my Grandmother and the same is on the verge of being rotten due to certain drops of water, what shall I do? Again the photo correction gives you the option to restore the glory of vintage photograph. All you have to do is just to scan and upload the picture in particular photo correction software, you will get a much better and colorful vintage in your hands. This kind of treatment includes removing scratches, folds and adding color to the background and to the faded area of photograph.

These services are definitely serving the basic of photography and accordingly motivating the creative minds. A person sitting idle at his home can pass his time by adding certain effects to the photographs he clicked while he was in school or college.

To conclude, these programs and services are for a healthy purpose, and should not be used for harming someone’s dignity or integrity, for defaming someone through mashing up the objectionable contents with the regular one.

Leave apart these silly side effects of photo correction services; they are actually turning out to be the blessings. 

Always Settle For Professional Image Retouch Services and Nothing Less

There are a number of clients who are looking for image retouch services that come from a professional and reliable source. This is a task that is best left up to experts in the field.

If you visit Google Images and type in ‘retouched photos’ you will find a long list of before and after images showing how programs like Photoshop can really help to enhance a photo in many ways. This will give a fairly good idea of what image editors are capable of and you just need to pick out a good company for the job. When it comes to image retouch, there are a number of techniques that can be used to get the desired result. This becomes a challenging task if you don’t have a good editor by your side helping you along the way.

Many people are of the opinion that retouching an image is a simple task that one can do within a couple of hours. However, if you want a professional finish, then you need to hire an expert image editor. There is no other way you could get the kind of effect you are looking for. Only a competent editor will understand your requirements and give you your money’s worth.

You can always try to retouch an image on your own to know firsthand just how much time and patience goes into the entire process. You will find that simple functions such as increasing the brightness, changing the contrast, etc. are a walk in the park; but when it comes to complex tasks such as cloning, masking, etc. then you will find yourself getting frustrated at the amount of time you spend trying to figure out what needs to be done. By the time, you realize this is a task that is best left up to expert editors you will have wasted a lot of precious time.

That’s why you should start hunting for a professional image retouch service provider as soon as possible. If you have in depth knowledge about Photoshop and how to retouch images, then you don’t need to worry about a thing.

However, most people have little knowledge of editing software that they try to stretch to the limit. Please don’t do that unless you are happy with images that look very amateurish.

There is a lot of work that goes into retouching an image, and this is mainly because the editor is always looking for the perfect result. This is the kind of service you will receive when you hire a company to take care of all your retouching issues. Such a firm will have a team of editors working on your project so you can relax while your images are edited in the right manner.

Over the years, clients have always sought professional retouching services because they know that it is good value for money. Why should you waste your time and energy when there is an able designer eagerly waiting to assist you? Instead of making a mess of the images just call in the experts who have been managing such tasks for a long period. Image retouch is not everyone’s cup of tea and you need to realize that eventually.