Studio Alegria Blog

At Studio Alegria , we place a lot of emphasis on retouching of our pictures. We believe that even though our style, technique, and creative vision is outstanding, every image can be markedly improved by a certain amount of post-process retouching.

Sometimes retouching of a picture is as simple as removing some stray hairs from a final portrait to complex retouching that can include skin resurfacing and body sculpting.

The ultimate goal of digital retouching is to deliver a flawless picture that extenuates the subject and fulfills the creative vision of the photographer sometimes without actually looking like any work to the picture has been done at all.

Our process starts with an original picture that has been perfectly post-processed for exposure, contrast and color saturation. This picture could normally stand on its own as a very fine portrait or portfolio photograph. We then carefully analyze the picture to decide how to make this already outstanding photograph even better. We look at things like the texture of the skin, the sparkle and definition of the eyes and the critical balance of light and shadow.

Other factors with the picture are considered also. For instance, does the photograph correctly convey the mood that the photographer and subject are trying to create? Can the picture be improved by tweaking the placement on the actual page or changing the crop of the picture? We sometimes even look at a picture and it just screams to be a black and white portrait.
Most importantly does the subject in all of the consideration we do prior to starting a full retouch is what is the intended use of the photograph from the subjects point of view. What does our client want this picture to say?

All of these factors are looked at and before a single pixel of the photograph is moved we develop a retouch workflow that is custom to that picture outlining exactly the steps and order that will be taken to transform this already outstanding portrait into a stunning work of art.

The actual process of professional retouching is very detailed and time consuming. We may spend several hours working at the pixel level of a photograph. (A 8X10 300 dots per inch photograph has millions of colored dots called pixels that make up the digital image) All to create an absolutely flawless portrait.

As you can see our retouching artist is as important as your photographer when it comes to delivering fine photographic art.
When we do our post-processing of images minor flaws are corrected without charge. Things like stray hairs, a string from clothing that wasn’t caught during the session, a stray pimple here and there (we all get em) are just removed as part of our workflow.