Professional image retouching is something which has been increasingly in the public eye as more and more people become aware that photo retouching is taking place.
Because of the high level of skill involved in professional photo retouching it can often be difficult or impossible to even notice whether photo retouching has taken place or not, although in some cases of course the changes are more than simply a light touch, and digital image manipulation may well drastically alter the original image to create something which would be impossible to recreate in real life, or at least very difficult or prohibitively expensive.
The old cliché always stated that the camera never lies, but the other popular cliché is that a picture paints a thousand words. An advertising or marketing image needs to do more than just paint a few words - it needs to reach out to potential customers, attract attention, actively engage with them and communicate a range of messages including the values, aims or principles of the company, the level of professionalism of the company, their style, quality and commitment, the quality of their products or services, the relevance of the product or service being advertised to the potential customer and why this particular model or brand is more suitable than any other.
That's an awful lot to try to fit into a single image, and when you consider that all of this has to take place in under a second, it's easy to realise why photo retouching is so important.
The camera may not lie, but what you do with the picture once the camera has finished taking it is another thing, and this is where professional image retouching comes into play. The word retouching generally implies a light touch, a little editing here and there, and generally this is all that's needed. Sometimes it takes relatively little to change the way an image looks in order to alter the emphasis slightly.
For example, the image may have a few slightly distracting reflections which need to be reduced, or perhaps some dark shadows which need to be lifted. Often one of the things you'll have noticed when you take photographs yourself is that the colours don't always look quite right. The difference might be quite subtle, but when you remember just how much a single marketing photograph has to convey and in such a short space of time, subtle differences make all the difference in terms of getting a sale or losing a potential customer.
One of the biggest problems with taking photographs is that it's very easy to mistake the camera for an eye. When you look through a viewfinder you tend to see what the human eye and brain is capable of seeing, but this is quite different to the way a camera 'sees' the world.
For example, if you look at a motorbike under good lighting you'll be able to explore almost every part of it in detail. Yet when you take a photograph you may find that areas of the bike are very glary and bright, preventing any examination of real detail, whilst other areas may be so dark and shadowy that it is impossible to make anything out at all. Why is this?
The reason is simple - the lighting or the exposure are wrong. But if you increase the exposure, the shadows may be much less dark, but the glare on the brighter areas is now so severe that the bike looks washed out. Decrease the exposure to reduce the glare and shine, and the shadows take over.
This is exactly what happens when you use your eye to look at the bike, but your eye is extremely good at adjusting exposure very quickly as you explore a scene. When you look at the darker areas the pupil of your eye expands, allowing more light in and effectively increasing the exposure. As you look at the brighter areas, the opposite happens.
A camera can only have one exposure setting per image, and so professional image retouching may involve piecing together elements from several different images of the same item, each of which has a different exposure level, creating an image which looks exactly the same as when you look at it in real life, yet which would be an impossible image to take with even the best camera in the world.
That's why sometimes advertising photographs can almost seem more real than feels possible, yet without any discernable evidence of photo retouching. The most experienced people who carry out professional photo retouching need to not only appreciate that less is more and that subtle differences can make big differences, but also need to appreciate the way our eyes and brains see the world, helping the camera to 'see' the world for us in more effective ways.
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.niche-content-articles.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
