Regarding digital photos, retouching means to alter the original photo using a photo-retouching program. Retouching can be a good thing or a bad thing and it all depends on how much a retouched photo differs from the original. Personally I retouch photos only to enhance and sometimes but rarely, alter what the image already has.
For example: If the model in the image has acne, skin rash, scars, dark under-eye circles, or something that they weren't originally born with I remove it. Things like beauty marks or freckles I keep because it's a characteristic that they were born with and it's unique to them.
Basically a photo should be enhance, not transform so much that a person’s picture looks unrecognizable or plastic-like. Also enhancing isn't a bad thing in itself, after all makeup is use to enhance people's appearance. If a bit more time was spent prepping the lighting, makeup, and wardrobe it would have the same effect. In other words the same results if one was to leave those things undone and decided to do it digitally instead.
Another reason for retouching is because the camera is unforgiving, and amplifies imperfections. A lot of models and actresses look far more profoundly perfect in the flesh -- retouching's just a way of simplifying an image to try and approximate the effect of seeing someone in person. After all, have you not see the models and actresses look fabulous in the behind-the-scene videos of photo shoots they were in? I've seen a couple and they take pictures in that same photo shoot but the photos don't match with how fabulous they look in person and in the video.
So it's understandable why retouching is needed when a situation like that happens. Of course, retouching photos is great when it's done right. But sometimes it's done badly and that's when it's over-retouched or manipulated into something completely different which distorts the truth -- the reality. I detest photos of models, celebrities and so on that are given an "overhaul retouched" which gives them an unrealistic appearance.
For example: Let's say there's a model at the beach and a photo captures her coming out of the water and walking towards the camera. It's a perfect shot of the shapely model that's got some healthy meat in her bones. She really doesn't need any retouching because the sun provides a natural light that makes her glow and her already lovely tanned skin is flawless. All the photo needed was the background to be brighter so that the colors don't look dull and sharpen a bit so it wouldn't look blurry.
But instead of leaving it at that, the bad retouching is when you take a curvaceous, beautiful, and already skinny model by making her even more skinnier. Not just that but also changing a few things. They do that by pulling in her stomach, reducing the width of her legs, arm, neck and cheeks, give her higher eyebrows arch, as well as make her breast more perky. That's a overhaul retouch work and it's usually the work you see on magazine covers, which can be impressionable to young girls and women.
Many aren't educated about the use of retouching on photos and believe that it's a reality. That what they see on the covers is "true beauty" and they strive to reach that beauty when such a thing doesn't exist and I don't like the message that kind of retouching brings. It's too much.
 DamnBlackHeart · Tue May 10, 2011 @ 02:02am · 0 Comments |
