Photo Retouching

I've been doing a lot of model portfolio work and I'm slowly warming up to the idea of doing this commercially. But that will mean I have to make them all look like they stepped out of a glossy, even if they have worse skin than my grandma.

So, I took a Glamour (Stop it blogger! It *is* glamour and not glamor. Do NOT red-squiggly-line me) Retouching class. It was an intense 4 hour session, demo only so that she could cover more material, and she took questions from us on what we wanted to learn in addition to her material. It was a really good class for model work, and strongly geared towards commercial shoots where the model only has to look hot, and not like her original self.

I practiced a lot after I came home and am rather proud of myself. Here are two examples. The first one is only skin smoothing and lipstick airbrushing, something I would be okay doing for a model though it fakes her skin.


This second one is way more dramatic, makes my model thinner and younger, and this would be an example of something you would do for a commercial shoot where nobody cares what the true face looks like because you are supposed to be staring at her clothes or jewelery or sunglasses or purse.


And yes, I did learn to make boobs bigger and tummies flatter - the instructor was after all a retoucher for Playboy at one point :)

The funny thing is, after I spent a few hours doing this, when I walked past a mirror and saw my face I immediately wanted to take a brush to it and start smoothing out my skin. It made me wonder how bad this would get if I was retouching for a magazine, clearing skin, stretching out legs, tucking in thighs, enhancing breasts, and then coming home to look at my own 30-something skin and body. I would probably spend all my savings on cosmetic surgery. But, I do enjoying working at the computer a lot. I could spend all day shooting and all night editing if that was all I had to do with my life.