I’m French, so excuse the mistakes in English! I’m not a photographer I used to be a fashion designer and had to make choices in the work to be done on the catalog pictures with my partner and our graphic artist.

We used retouching to take off a few scars, a crooked toe, even to take a face from a different photo to put it on the body and outfit we NEEDED. Why? To sell our clothes, obviously.

The graphic artist was named at the end of the catalog as any member of the shoot crew but we never explained how heavily the photos were retouched, the same way we didn’t explained that the make up artist had to hide a pimple on the model’s face or that we had to put a pin on the back of a dress because it didn’t exactly fit the model!

As professionals who deal with all the tools available to manipulate what we see (as well as what we hear in other types of media) we are undoubtedly more aware than the very target of those manipulated images out there. And this is of course why we have to set the limits of those very manipulations.

However, to me, PSing a photo is part of the creative process as much as picking the model or the landscape, the lighting and every aspect of the pre- and post-prod. Whether you see it as a simple tool to use or as a proper part of the result you seek (for self or client), I doubt any professional can consider it a way to dupe the audience.
Not that I want to be naive and think that professionals are not aware of the illusion people don’t see (it is still part of why those pictures sell), but the photographer/retoucher is still a creative, therefore an artist, and their responsibility can only be limited to the point/opinion/purpose they express in their creation: the interpretation is the responsibility of the one who looks at the image!

I completely agree with you RC and Terry on these two necessary things: education and vulgarisation (I don’t know if the term is right in English. In French it means “making something more common and accessible to the greater number of people”)! The more Photoshoppers and aware peers out there, the better the process of Photoshopping will be understood!

And the more tricks will be unveiled to the public! BONUS!!!

I tried to limit what I wanted to say as much as I could but it’s not always easy to be condensed when you express your opinion!
Again, RC, thank you for this great article and many thanks to everyone who gave their input! It’s a passionnating subject!

I do more landscape photography than portrait, yet no one seems to have a problem if I increase the color saturation of a sunset photo just to increase the impact of the picture, or take a color photo and make it Black and White, or add Sepia or Blur or any number of other things. But put a person in the photo and trim their waist or smooth out their skin then be prepared for the angry mob…

I think as photographers, we are more focused (pun intended) on dissecting published images than the general public, but I think also that we do that to better our own work. If we see an obvious Photoshop giveaway, then we become more aware of it when working on our own photos.

Admittedly, I’ve got mixed feelings about retouching, as Scott Kelby said, retouch to recreate what you saw (okay I paraphrased) but it makes sense….if it didn’t stand out to you in person, then why must it stand out to you in a finished photo?

Do your retouching in a moderate way…don’t try to make a new person.

I have deep-set eyes and a big nose. Unless I’m staring right into the light, my eye area is going to be dark; conversely, my nose is going to pick up the highlights, which makes it look even bigger.

I took one of the photos my daughter shot today and brushed lightened exposure around my eyes and darkened the exposure on my nose. I lightened the whites of my eyes since they were shadowed (like I said, they’re very deep-set).

Do I feel bad, sneaky, or deceptive about the changes? Not one bit. Maybe one reason I never liked having my picture made is that I always disliked the end result (and yes, I have one of those chicken pox scars, too).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnEvudXqP-w

I think if it is a portrait then you do what the client wants and that goes for any sale. But I think that the rags should add a caveat that these images are heavily retouched or slightly modified depending on what has been done. Newspapers should only allow the type of stuff that can be done in the LR2 Develop Module to be done and then limit it to the top portion of the module without using the brush thingy. Same for News shots. perty soon the videos we see will be PSed on the news before we are shown them if we do not put some universal guidelines in place.