Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of photo retouching, working with images shot by other photographers. Some of these photographers clearly know their craft because the images sent to me are extremely well done. The retouching required is usually adding or removing specific objects as requested by the final client.
On the other hand, some photographers are, uh, not as skilled. A significant portion of my retouching work involves fixing their mistakes and trying to compensate for their lack of expertise. But even after retouching, the final image may still be subpar due to issues like weak portrait poses, poor lighting, bad composition, or other problems that retouching can’t fix.
Retouching Family Portraits
Recently I worked on two sets of outdoor portraits, from two different families, shot by two different photographers.
The first set had images that were overexposed by about two stops, resulting in overly bright faces and washed-out hair highlights. Additionally, all the photos were crooked. I guess the photographer had one leg shorter than the other :-) The images were also cropped too tightly, making it impossible to print or frame them without cutting off body parts of family members.
This photographer is a wedding-portrait photographer with ten years experience according to his website. A look at the EXIF data revealed he used Lightroom. His editing and masking were poorly executed, leaving behind clearly visible halos and artifacts.
The second set of family photos had some images that were too dark, others too bright, and one photo had its contrast lowered so much that it was a mostly grey image with no shadows or highlights. The photographer’s poor masking techniques left obvious and sharp outlines around the subjects after the photographer did a terrible job of blurring the backgrounds.
These two sets of photos were, at best, the work of advanced amateurs, not professionals. If the photographers had delivered higher-quality images, there would have been little to no need for my retouching services, and the families would have saved money.
Photographers – learn to use your camera’s manual settings for portrait sessions. Use a tripod. Learn to edit. Get your photos critiqued at portfolio reviews.
Customers – always hire the best photographer you can afford. Don’t go cheap if the photos are important.
No Retouching Allowed
I recently encountered an unusual situation when a customer requested retouching on some of her wedding photos. The issue was that her photographer had included a “no alterations” clause in the photo contract, prohibiting any edits or retouching by anyone other than the photographer. If the customer wanted any retouching done, they had to buy the service from the photographer.
A quick web search showed that a few other wedding photographers also have a no-alterations clause. I did not find any other type of photographer who had a similar contract clause, only wedding photographers. However I did find one wedding photographer whose contract specifically stated that the customer is free to use/edit/print their photos in any way they want, except for commercial use. It went on to say that the customer should use and share their photos as much as possible. What a good marketing move!
While I understand that photographers have moral rights over their work and that poorly executed retouching can reflect badly on the photographer, a no-alterations clause seems overly restrictive, especially for private use.
It’s quite possible such a clause violates Canada’s Competition Act, Section 77, which addresses “exclusive dealing.” This law prevents a supplier or manufacturer from forcing customers to work only with them.
This customer’s wedding photos had issues with exposure, colour, contrast and saturation. Yes, I know that some wedding photographers have a “style” that they use over and over again. But (i) a style should enhance the mood of a photo but it should not dominate over the content; (ii) styles come and go and, in a few years or so, the customer may be stuck with out-of-style images that no longer interest them. Retouching is important because the look of a photo can be changed at any time to suit the customer. But this retouching is only possible if the original photos were well shot with lots of good data and the customer isn’t handcuffed with a no-alterations clause.
Additionally, this customer’s wedding photos really did need retouching to smooth the bride’s skin tone, brighten eyes, add catchlights, remove stray hairs, adjust a crooked tie, and clean up distracting backgrounds. I did all the retouching requested and the customer was happy with the results.
Being Secretive
Another odd issue I’ve noticed is that some wedding photographers remove the EXIF data from their images prior to delivery to the customer. The photographer’s name and copyright notice are in the IPTC data but all other information has been deleted. I’ve retouched photos shot by a variety of photographers but, so far, removing EXIF data seems to be done only by some wedding photographers.
Few photographers, of any kind, take full advantage of IPTC data. My guess is that most non-news photographers don’t know about IPTC data, what it’s for, or what it can do for the photographer and the customer.
Misaligned Photographer
A customer sent in a batch of wedding photos for retouching, and several of them were noticeably out of focus. This raises an obvious question: why did the photographer deliver such images to the client? The photographer’s business name was embedded in the IPTC data, (and all other metadata was removed), and their website identified them as a large Toronto wedding photography company with about two dozen employees. Given their size and professional profile, one would expect them to know better than to deliver out-of-focus images.
Another odd thing about the images was the focus error in many of the images, which appeared to be caused by an alignment issue. For horizontal photos, about 75% of the image, from left to right, was in focus, while the remaining portion was blurred. In vertical photos, the same pattern emerged, with roughly 75% of the image in focus from top to bottom, leaving the rest out of focus. This suggests that either a lens element, the lens mount, or the camera sensor is misaligned. It’s surprising that the photographer didn’t catch this, as the issue was quite obvious.
