Retouched vs Unretouched?

[Darth Wong]

Well, we finally decided to get professionally done photos of Rebecca (but not me; I know no one wants to see that), complete with hair and makeup and proper lighting. It's amazing what a difference that makes. We did it because we figured that at the age of 42, there wouldn't be a lot of photogenic years left.

Anyway, one of the pics is at http://www.stardestroyer.net/Mike/wordp ... 855_rw.jpg and the photographer gave us both the retouched and unretouched versions. I guess I'm not that familiar with PhotoShop, but I was actually surprised at how much smoothing they can do while still retaining a reasonably sharp-looking picture. Is there some built-in filter that does this, or do photographers manually work over each picture?

[Havok]

Looking at the picture and the fact that the table top pattern and trim detail has also been smoothed, I would say it's a filter.
On top of that, looking at her hair, there is definitely some deliberate changes that a filter wouldn't be able to manage.
So I would say it looks like a mix of both to me. I'm certainly no photoshop expert though.

Did you want opinions on which one people preferred?

[Darth Wong]

Looking at the picture and the fact that the table top pattern and trim detail has also been smoothed, I would say it's a filter.
On top of that, looking at her hair, there is definitely some deliberate changes that a filter wouldn't be able to manage.
So I would say it looks like a mix of both to me. I'm certainly no photoshop expert though.

I guess I had a similar feeling; it seemed like there was a change to the whole look of the photo, which would suggest a filter, but it also seemed like certain specific changes would have required manual work.

Did you want opinions on which one people preferred?

I suppose I'm curious about that too. Smooth vs Natural.

[Havok]

I prefer natural beauty every time.

[General Zod]

There's filters in lightroom that let you change the entire skintone, but the wrinkles were probably touched-up by hand, so most likely it was a combination. It helps if there's not a lot of wrinkles to remove in the first place.

[Terralthra]

At least two filters have been applied to the whole image, but manual work has also been done (not just to her face and skin).

The image looks as if it's had a basic guassian blur applied to all the non-sharp areas to smooth imperfections in the table and gradation of color on the wall in the background, then resharpened in order to get rid of tell-tale blur (check the edge of the floor molding in the background; it's actually a bit sharper a transition in the retouched one than the original, despite a general blur being applied to the area and it not being in focus to begin with). It's also been lightened a bit in the background (to give better contrast to the image as a whole). You can also see that the black ribbon on her spaghetti strap is a bit more blurred in the retouched than in the original.

The wrinkles are all smoothed manually (well, digitally, but "by hand," not through use of an image- or layer-wide filter). Her hair (particularly near the part and to the her right of the part) has been smoothed and the edges all over cleaned up by hand, along with smoothing and evening out her roots.

Had I been retouching this, I actually would have left some of the crow's feet and shading near her dimples in the image, as the utterly smooth perfection screams PHOTOSHOP to me; people half her age have crow's feet. I also note that he removed a lot of smaller blemishes on her skin, but left the larger moles on her lower throat and shoulder intact.

I understand the urge to retouch, but there is something to the idea that the more you retouch, the further it gets from being a true portrait of someone's natural beauty, which your wife has in spades.

[madd0ct0r]

the second pic dosen't look any worse then a overly thick layer of foundation.


I'm having trouble deciding if he also very slightly added length to her face, or if that's an illusion from the lessened shadows.

eyelashes have been darkened too - but like the minor skin work, that might all be the blur fliter

[Terralthra]

The eyelashes being thickened is more manual retouching, not a filter.

[Darth Wong]

At least two filters have been applied to the whole image, but manual work has also been done (not just to her face and skin).

The image looks as if it's had a basic guassian blur applied to all the non-sharp areas to smooth imperfections in the table and gradation of color on the wall in the background, then resharpened in order to get rid of tell-tale blur (check the edge of the floor molding in the background; it's actually a bit sharper a transition in the retouched one than the original, despite a general blur being applied to the area and it not being in focus to begin with). It's also been lightened a bit in the background (to give better contrast to the image as a whole). You can also see that the black ribbon on her spaghetti strap is a bit more blurred in the retouched than in the original.

The wrinkles are all smoothed manually (well, digitally, but "by hand," not through use of an image- or layer-wide filter). Her hair (particularly near the part and to the her right of the part) has been smoothed and the edges all over cleaned up by hand, along with smoothing and evening out her roots.

Had I been retouching this, I actually would have left some of the crow's feet and shading near her dimples in the image, as the utterly smooth perfection screams PHOTOSHOP to me; people half her age have crow's feet. I also note that he removed a lot of smaller blemishes on her skin, but left the larger moles on her lower throat and shoulder intact.

Are you a professional photographer yourself? You certainly sound like you know a lot about the subject. Apologies if your occupation is common knowledge; I haven't been keeping up.

I understand the urge to retouch, but there is something to the idea that the more you retouch, the further it gets from being a true portrait of someone's natural beauty, which your wife has in spades.

I always thought so

[Terralthra]

Are you a professional photographer yourself? You certainly sound like you know a lot about the subject. Apologies if your occupation is common knowledge; I haven't been keeping up.

I minored in Photography as an undergrad, and have taken classes since then to keep up on any new techniques in digital. I don't do it for a living, but I occasionally take event photos or portraits as a side gig.

Here's one of my fiancée:

And one of my nephew Brett a few years ago (on slide film, scanned to digital):

The one of my cousin is overexposed by a shitty film scanner, sadly (most noticeable on his fingers).

[FaxModem1]

I prefer the one on the left, the eyes stand out more and have more life to them.

[JLTucker]

I prefer the one on the left, the eyes stand out more and have more life to them.

And the applied makeup hasn't been smoothed to death. Her cheeks actually look rosy. The retouched photo even smoothed out her hair, losing detail in the process. There's no detail in the face, the forehead, or the eyebrows. I'd only develop the natural image, Mike.

[someone_else]

I agree with Terralthra, a bit too perfect for a human being. The major killer is the skin, it looks like her skin is made of plastic to me.
I'd have played a bit to reduce the wrinkles, maybe lighten a bit around the eyes and nuke a few imperfections around (like the one on the cheek and others more apparent in the full-size version that here don't really show) and called it a day (touching skin tone/smoothness as a whole is a big no-no for me, too obvious). There is really no need to make her glow like that, albeit it's still done by professionals (I've seen so glowy skin in other photoshops that was outright hilarious).

Just out of lulz I'm gonna play with GIMP (free open-source photoshop-grade image editor you can find easily) on the image to show what a completely untrained monkey like me can do with modern photoshop-like software. I had tons of fun modifying photos with photoshop 7 on the past so it shouldn't totally suck in the end.

AHA!!!! the heal tool still makes wonders. Used that to kill wrinkles an the imperfection on the cheek while on "dissolve" on size 5.
Used a bit of paintbrush on white and opacity 11 to lighten up the dark parts under the eyes.

Seems like the whole image was darkened a bit, unknown reason, raising saturation to 11 to compensate.

Assembling a tri-image and posting (the original in the middle, my work on the left).... I don't know how to export them and not lose quality, so I leave quality at max. That's around 1 MB of weight. I frankly haven't found any rules on posting images other than "don't post porn" so I hope I'm not violating anything by doing this.

graciously hosted by dropbox for free, feel free to have a look at how cool it is. If you like it and want to sign up please do it with this link so we both get more space as a bonus.


DISCLAIMER: this does NOT mean photoshopping print-grade multi-megapixel images will be the same level of easy since I never tried on such high-quality images and I think it will be more painful not not create easily-detectable smooth areas in the modified parts due to the HUGE level of detail they have. Just that it's way less hard than may seem.
Which only speaks badly of 60% of the porn you find, where they just make skin glow and think that makes the gal more attractive. Idiots.

[Terralthra]

someone_else:

Nice work. May I offer some critique?

[Darth Wong]

Yeah, it looks nice. The more subtle retouching does look nicer than the heavier retouching, although I think photographers have become accustomed to people asking for the heavy stuff, because that's what people do on magazine covers. The picture is actually a cropped portion of the original photo. In the larger photo, the "gloss" you mention is apparent for the entire image, and it looks like the photographer reworked the skin on her stomach and hand.

[Terralthra]

He also noticeably narrowed her thigh, brought in her flanks, and widened her right breast. The blur applied to the whole image is especially apparent in the lace on her left bra cup; the sharpness of that is gone.

Edit: for those of you without PhotoRetoucherVision, here's a quick image displaying what I mean.
This was created by overlaying the two images (retouched and unretouched), with what's called a "difference" blending. The more dramatic the difference between the two layers, the brighter the resulting color will be.



Note the bright slivers along the thighs, flanks, smaller ones on the arms, and filling out the bra cup.

[Darth Wong]

Heh. I didn't notice any of those other changes.

[madd0ct0r]

confirmation bias - you already see her that way.

that difference blending trick is a great tool Terralthra - noted.

[Darth Wong]

confirmation bias - you already see her that way.

I suppose that's part of it, although I wasn't even looking for those kinds of changes. At the risk of boasting, she has a fantastic figure for a woman of 42 years, and it doesn't seem to me that there would be any reason to change the shape of her leg. I guess photographers just get in the habit of changing those sort of things if they do a lot of glamour photos.

[someone_else]

Nice work. May I offer some critique?

Sure. You likely know much more than I do, and you'll likely destroy my own self-esteem, but go ahead.

it looks like the photographer reworked the skin on her stomach and hand.

Having a 30+ old woman fold up like that it's asking for getting those issues on stomach.
In the back old days when you didn't had photoshop, smart photographers simply placed the people in the right poses/postures or used tricks like placing big clothespins in unseen areas to make a temporary "lifting effect" in the areas that got on the pic (wasn't comfortable for the subject but worked).

The right pose can make A LOT of difference. But again I'm not a photographer, I just know one way older than me and we talked a lot.

[Terralthra]

Not really trying to burst your ego, just giving you some ideas.

For one thing, to lighten a section, instead of drawing on a partially-transparent white cast, use the "dodge" tool. The dodge tool lightens the part being dodged as if it were being lightened via old-school photographic techniques: a tool held in front of the light being projected through the negative as the photographic paper was being exposed, essentially lessening the exposure of the part being covered.

The reason to do this is that painting with white (even low opacity painting) affects not just the brightness, but also the hue of the parts being brightened, giving them a paler cast in addition to lightening. The main goal (brightening) is achieved, but at the cost of a more noticeable transition from lightened areas to non-lightened areas (due to the hue change).

Another thing to note is that too much detail can be bad. Not that you should smooth over the image like you're polishing with wax, but a little bit of blur isn't bad. That's why soft-focus lenses were popular for portraits, after all! A little bit of guassian blur won't appear unreal, and would help with parts of the face with irregular texture (e.g. her right cheekbone). Too much, and you get the unreal effect, so it's a very delicate balance. Separating sections out and blurring different amounts creates a "patchwork" effect, and is best avoided unless you really know what you're doing (and can disguise the blur as being a depth-of-field effect).

The hair...this is a touchy one. The photographer who retouched it did some things that are good to it, but also a little too much shine and polish, in my opinion. Some close-in manual work cleaning up the roots of her hair isn't bad, just to make it look even from front to back. Depending on your taste, it might be a good idea to tame some of the more stray hairs using a clone/heal brush (not sure if the GIMP has that, but it should). Basically, it uses the texture of one portion of the image as the basis for healing another part. So, if a hair crosses one of the curls/waves, set as the base a portion of the curl with the some rough shape and outline as the part crossed by a stray hair, then use the healing tool to cover up the stray hair. Too much of this, and again, it looks fake, but a little bit can take what is already a really lovely haircut and make it look even more va-va-voom.

Lastly, the retoucher had the right idea with the table surface. The scratches and scuffs are distracting. Blurring or smoothing them out makes the background less cluttered, and draws the eyes better to the subject.

[Dillon]

confirmation bias - you already see her that way.

I suppose that's part of it, although I wasn't even looking for those kinds of changes. At the risk of boasting, she has a fantastic figure for a woman of 42 years, and it doesn't seem to me that there would be any reason to change the shape of her leg. I guess photographers just get in the habit of changing those sort of things if they do a lot of glamour photos.

It could be that a lot of women don't like having that muscular lump on the front side of their thigh. I know I've been told by womenfolk before that they don't like the way it looks in tight jeans. Maybe your wife doesn't mind it, but perhaps enough women dislike it, that photo editors have a general rule where they edit it out. I don't think any straight male would object, and I actually love toned legs on a woman, but if women's insecurities about their bodies always matched what men dislike or even notice... Well, you get the idea.

[Darth Wong]

It could be that a lot of women don't like having that muscular lump on the front side of their thigh. I know I've been told by womenfolk before that they don't like the way it looks in tight jeans. Maybe your wife doesn't mind it, but perhaps enough women dislike it, that photo editors have a general rule where they edit it out.

That's bizarre. Seriously, I can't imagine why women would want to make it look like they do not have quadriceps in their legs.

I don't think any straight male would object, and I actually love toned legs on a woman, but if women's insecurities about their bodies always matched what men dislike or even notice... Well, you get the idea.

Yeah, no kidding. Whenever I crack open a womens' magazine with its distorted images, I always think "these women really need to look at a power tool calendar to get an idea of what men really like". Hell, they could even watch porno. The range of womens' body types and appearances which men can find sexually alluring is much larger in porn than it is in "womens' magazines".

[spaceviking]

I know little of photography but I find it odd that the areas of the body that were retouched seem kind of shiny. I think the alterations to the breasts and leg would be less noticeable if they kept the original skin tone.

[Darth Wong]

Having a 30+ old woman fold up like that it's asking for getting those issues on stomach.

In the back old days when you didn't had photoshop, smart photographers simply placed the people in the right poses/postures or used tricks like placing big clothespins in unseen areas to make a temporary "lifting effect" in the areas that got on the pic (wasn't comfortable for the subject but worked).

The right pose can make A LOT of difference. But again I'm not a photographer, I just know one way older than me and we talked a lot.

In the photographer's defense, there were plenty of pictures and that wasn't an issue with most of them. It was just this one pose, where it's hard to avoid folds unless the person is built like an Olympic athlete or is half-starved.