wedding

How Retouching Enhances Wedding Photos

No Comments

Professional retouching can significantly improve wedding photos by correcting technical issues, enhancing skin appearance, and adding artistic effects, all while preserving the natural beauty of the moment.

Correct Technical Issues

Wedding photographers often work quickly and with limited equipment. They don’t always have control over the lighting in venues like churches, hotel ballrooms or parks. As a result, uneven or unpredictable lighting can affect the quality of the images. Photo editing and retouching help correct these lighting issues, ensuring the final photos are visually balanced.

Most wedding photographers do some basic editing before delivering the photos. But few perform detailed retouching. This is usually because it’s time-consuming, not cost-effective, or simply outside their skill set.
Continue reading →

Observations from Photo Retouching

No Comments

Lately, I’ve been retouching a lot of photos shot by other photographers. Some are really good and need only minor edits or some compositing. But others, not so much. A lot of my work involves fixing photographer mistakes, trying to salvage images marred by poor posing, bad lighting, or weak composition—issues that retouching can’t always fix.

Retouching Family Portraits

I recently worked on two sets of outdoor family portraits shot by different photographers.
Continue reading →

Wedding Photos and Retouching

No Comments
An example of basic retouching of a wedding photo. Retouching corrected overall colour, exposure and contrast, a few stray hairs were removed, facial skin tone was evened out, and catchlights were added to the eyes.

If your wedding photos will be important to you, then hiring a professional photographer is essential.

I received an email from a woman who wanted her summer wedding photos retouched. She wanted to create a wedding album in time for Christmas. She wrote that her pictures “need work and maybe a lot of work.”

After reviewing her photos, it was obvious she was right. Her photos needed a lot of work.

Instead of hiring a professional, the couple had asked friends with cellphones to take the wedding photos. While that might have seemed like a fun and budget-friendly decision at the time, reality has now set in.
Continue reading →

Retouching Wedding Photos

No Comments

Textile conservators uncrate Lady Diana’s 1981 royal wedding gown in preparation for a celebration of her life in Toronto, 09 December 2003.

This is another view-from-my-office photo.

A large portion of my photo retouching is fixing and polishing business headshots so the person looks their best. I’ve done some commercial retouching where the work was more technical than creative. For examples: placing images onto TV screens and computer displays, changing a company’s logo in its marketing photos, and adding drop shadows to various products. I also retouch photos of completed house renovations.
Continue reading →

Trash The Risk

No Comments

A Quebec woman last week drowned while being photographed in her bridal gown during a trash-the-dress photo shoot. A “trash the dress” is where a woman is photographed a few days, weeks, or months, after her wedding and she wears her bridal gown in a wet, dirty or otherwise unorthodox location. One would have thought that this fad disappeared after the 1970s but it became trendy again.

The family of the victim released a statement which seemed to place blame on the photographer:

These character traits made [the victim] very trusting in others. … One thing we are certain about is that [the victim] would have never put her life at risk. Her love for life, for her husband and for her family would never allow it.
(…)
She trusted [the photographer’s] recommendation for the location and felt safe enough to attend the photo shoot alone with the photographers. She followed their directions and put trust in their professionalism.

While no lawsuit against the photographer has been launched, (the funeral has yet to be held), one might guess where this is heading.
Continue reading →

css.php