Photography’s Digital Possibilities - Retouching

Retouching or touching up a photo can easily be done in modern image editing software. One of the popular programs is Adobe’s Photoshop, which this tutorial is based on. Other programs have similar tools and can be used in the same way. In fields such as photojournalism and documentary photography, retouching and image alterations should be used very moderately.

Why retouching?

Retouching is typically used to remove spots and blemishes in a photo, resulting from dust and dirt on the lens and sensor. It can also be used to remove unwanted details in your photo such as for instance those small pieces of litter that you didn’t notice when you took that nice landscape picture or the skin imperfections on the cute photo model you’ve just made a stunning portrait of.

Using the ‘clone stamp’ and ‘healing brush’ tools is straight forward. With the ‘clone stamp’ tool you first select a reference point from where you want the image pixels copied. You then proceed to ‘paint’ over your unwanted spots like you were using the ‘paintbrush’. It is best used on large, uniform areas of your image where there’s no significant difference in colour or texture. If that’s not the case, the ‘healing brush’ usually provides a better option. It’s used in the same way, but takes into account the colour and texture around the spots you’re trying to remove. Most of the time it will remove the spots with a single ‘stroke of the paintbrush’, leaving no trace of rework.

Before submitting my photos to my stock agency, I always check the photos for unwanted spots. No agency or photo buyer likes to receive a ‘dirty’ submission so it’s important to be 100% sure that you get all of them before handing over your photo to a client. I have developed a little method that makes it easier for me to spot the spots and remove them. It’s simple, just create an adjustment layer (press F1 for help if you’re not sure how to do it), select ‘curves’ and make the contrast very high, especially in the most spot-prone areas such as the sky and blank surface. This will make every spot stand out clearly, easy to spot. Now click on the original background layer to make sure that’s where you are working and proceed with the ‘clone stamp’ and ‘healing brush’ tools to remove them one by one. When you’re finished, delete the adjustment layer again. Now you’re sure you got’em all!

Another couple of great tools for retouching is the ‘burn tool’ and the ‘dodge tool’. The ‘burn tool’ is used to make bright areas darker and the ‘dodge tool’ for making dark areas brighter. Set the % ratio to something like 20% and the brush size to whatever is appropriate for your specific purpose. The neat thing is you can select between working on shadows, midtones or highlights only. It’s a common problem that the sky is overexposed, but quickly swiping the ‘burn tool’ over the white sky (having selected to work on highlights) makes it light grey, as if it was overcast. For portraits, the ‘dodge tool’ is excellent for making teethes in the smiling mouth more white. Since the tools preserves any texture, it looks more natural than actually starting to paint things grey or white.

The ‘sponge tool’ is also useful for saturating or de-saturating certain parts of your photo. As with overexposed areas, strong colours draw our attention to them. Use the ‘sponge’ to attract more attention to the important parts of your photo and away from the distracting things in the background. And as with all digital alterations, use it moderately, not more than what is just needed. Less is more.

But perhaps the neatest trick of all is this one:

Chromatic aberration effects and chromatic noise resulting from high ISO setting on the camera can be a pain to deal with. Noise can be removed with special plug-in filters such as NoiseNinja (new Photoshop models have noise removal build in and it is getting more and more common), but they leave everything a little less sharp. Another option is to tediously retouch away at miniscule details all day long. But there is a little combination that works just short of magically when it comes to chromatic disturbances, try it out: First go to ‘Filter > Blur > Gaussian blur’ and set the radius to approximately 7 px. This will of course make your image completely blurred. But then go to ‘Edit > Fade Gaussian Blur’ and select ‘Mode = Colour’. You’re not going to believe what happens until you try it yourself. The sharpness is restored and all chromatic disturbances have disappeared! It tend to leave your image with a little less colour saturation, but this is easily taken care of in ‘Image > Adjustment > Hue/Saturation’. You might also want to check for other artefacts. If you find any, they are now easily removed with the ‘clone stamp’ and healing brush’ tools described above.