The 8-bit vs 16-bit dilemma made easy.

     People often discuss the many retouching techniques to achieve the “best” or most “natural” effect, for example for skin retouching. Although it is true, that proper techniques should be used to retain the structure of the skin, textiles, etc., in my understanding, it is just as important to understand what should be changed using these techniques, and not only concentrate on the how.

     I have met talented retouchers or photographers who retouch themselves; young, full of knowledge, tricks and technical skills and yet their post production work, look of final images, lacked something. At first I did not know what I was missing, it did take me a while to understand that most people, at least at the beginning of their career, tend to concentrate too much on the technical side and keep forgetting that the most important aspect is the esthetics of a photograph (not going into the meaning of an image and it’s impact on its value). Everyone prefers a beautiful although a bit poorly altered shot to an ugly perfectly retouched one.

     And so when we retouch a person, to make him beautiful, by which I mean to show his natural beauty, not making him into a Barbie, or just to make him look appropriate to the context of the image, we should concentrate much more on “revealing” the person’s face, than just on altering the skin texture or removing wrinkles.

     When retouching human faces there are a number of things we usually correct (and it is not whitening teeth as most people might think); the most important thing for me is stress and tiredness. How do you remove that, you might ask? In fact it is not that complicated.