Beauty Retouching in Less-than-Ideal Situations

Recently, I had the opportunity to take photographs alongside a video production. An instructional DVD was being produced and there was a segment where I was being filmed photographing models with their new hair colors and makeup. The challenge I faced in photographing the models was the video lights were all placed in the optimal places for the subjects and the director wanted me to insert my Iighting strobes in places that weren’t ideal for lighting my subjects. Thank god I know a thing or two about photoshop and I was able to compensate in the computer for a less than ideal lighting setup. Here are a few before and after shots of what the image looked like coming off the camera and how they ended up in the final product. Looking at this picture from a hair color point of view, many people would think that I boosted the hair colors in the after shot. And while I may be guilty of boosting a few things in this shot -hair color was not one of them. Thanks to a photoshop technique I perform in LAB, I was able to pull out a lot of the color information that is embedded but not showing up on the original copy. If you were there and saw her in real life, her haircolor is 100% accurately portrayed in the after shot. Most retouchers boost colors through the hue and saturation adjustments and while you might get very colorful results, they are not accurate and do not print very well. While having a good makeup artist is extremely important, makeup sometimes encounters the same pitfall as hair. How you see it in real life and how it comes out on film don’t always match up either -especially with the poor lighting we had to work with. Again, it’s good to be able to fall back on photoshop if you have to. Lipsticks, foundations, blushes, eyeshadows -even cleaning up eyebrows are all possible adjustments if you get caught in a bind. The makeup artist did an amazing job and as a retoucher, it’s my obligation to make sure their work is accurately portrayed as well. With all that being said, as a photographer and a retoucher, I still think the most important element in these kind of shots is having a strong connection with the eyes. We’ve all heard the saying, “The eyes are a window into ones soul.” It might sound a little cliche but nevertheless it’s very true. With my lights being so far off, I wasn’t able to get a good catchlight in the eyes that always seems to give life to an image. Again, with photoshop to the rescue, we were able to overcome an obstacle that just a few years ago would have been impossible.