Photo Retouching: Pay It Forward

I have been fortunate to learn from some amazing photographers and retouchers, and I will always be in debt to them. So one thing that I always try and do is pass on knowledge to emerging people in the business. One of my mentees wanted me to show her some of my tricks. We chose this image and I went through with her as she watched all the steps for retouching an Image. Please tell us what you think?

Photo by Lauren Kasmir

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Flying away - Hair Photography

I was recently contacted by a Salon in Washington DC that was in need of some photo retouching. One of the hardest things to photograph well is hair photography. No matter how good the photographer/stylist/make-up artist are, there is almost always going to be a need for a retoucher. Fly-aways are that pain in the side of every hairstylist and they will almost always be in the picture no matter how hard you try to avoid them.

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Photo Retouching: Recent Fun Shoot

Last nights retouching: Up for comments and questions!

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Photo Retouching: Minding your "X's" and "M's"

Recently, I got a call to see if I could do something for a client. They needed the "XM" taken out of the background of a portrait to send to another publication. They needed it ASAP, so I gave myself 30 minutes to see if I could complete the task. I did and they were very pleased with the end product.
As you can see from the image, there wasn't much space for me to use the clone brush to fabricate the background, so I decided to create the wall from scratch using lines and the gradient tool.

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DC Headshots - Magic-eye

Earlier this week, I had a headshot client who had a small problem. When she smiled, her right eye seemed to close a bit. Because I try to keep my clients very happy and satisfied with my work, I took that portion of the photo and liquified it to match the other eye.
Here is the end result.

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DC Headshots: Don't Talk to the Hand

Recently, I needed to help out a local actor. I took her headshots, and this was one of her favorite images, except for the hand in the photo. She (and I) felt it was distracting, and detracted from her face. I used the clone stamp and the patch tool to remove her hand, while keeping the correct color and tone to the space that I had to create.

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Retouching

Retouching can become a slippery slope, especially when you consider how much retouching can be done to an image. Headshots are supposed to represent the actor that is being considered for employment. But what if the actor's skin leaves much to be desired, or he asks me to make 10 pounds disappear? I usually tell them: "I can do anything in Photoshop that can be done with makeup or avoided by a position change." Here are some examples of my fashion retouching (not my headshot retouching):

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