Photo editing is not everyone’s cup of tea. Although it requires high-quality photo retouching skills and expertise on tools such as Photoshop, there are still a few things that would make or break your work.
Edited photographs should act like show-stoppers. They are the ones through which your work will be judged. The online shopper does not have a lot of time to glance through each and every photo. He/she will stop only at those pictures that look appealing.
Having said so, it is of course mandatory to have good photo retouching skills, but there are a lot of things you should not do to a photograph. Let us discuss them one by one.
Things you should not do while photo retouching
- Learning and not practicing – It is good to be up-to-date with technology, but is also important to practice whatever you learn. Most of the retouching work can be done using Photoshop retouching tools such as paint brush, crop tool, clone stamp, and dodge & burn technique. The more you get in to the tool, you will realize that there are many more things that should be learnt as well as practiced.
- Not smoothing the skin– If you are working on a portrait of a person, it is your duty to remove all blemishes from the face. However, some photo retouchers use the brush quite strongly, thus making the skin tone look unnatural and plastic. It is important not to lose skin textures and try to keep the skin as natural as possible.
- Wrong use of filters – If you have a poor quality image, you should remember that heavy application of watercolor filter will make the photo look awful. You have several filters available in Photoshop and the more you look at each of them, the more you will be confused. Spherize Filter is the only filter that works in most cases.
- Over adjusted tones – Adjusting different tones are important for tuning an image. The tones used should match with one another. If you choose to use colors made up of different shades, you should ensure that they are not over adjusted. Ultimately, what looks good to the human eye is what sells.
- Over saturating colors –Too much of color boosting can make the photograph dull. If you have a picture with good greenery in the background, make sure that the green look in the image stays natural. The best way to review your own photo is to ask a friend to have a look at it and judge the same.
- Not refining your raw file –When photographs are shot in raw format, there is a lot of unwanted light and color that can make your raw file heavy to work on. It is therefore necessary to prepare your raw file, before you import it to Photoshop. Balancing the required amount of light before retouching will save a lot of time and effort too.
- Not zooming out often –When you are working on a photo, you get so engrossed in it that you are bound to spend a lot of time while being zoomed in. This makes you concentrate too much on minute things. Also, it is a sign of making things better than required. Photo editors should learn that rather than chasing perfection, the final output should be flawless.
- Concentrating only on the face –If you are working on an image with a person’s face, you should ensure that you pay attention to the person’s neck, ears and even shoulders. Retouching only the face and ignoring the rest will make the image look unnatural and odd. Perfect toning and adjusting skin smoothness plays a pivotal role in retouching.
- Using recurring patterns in cloned areas– While using Photoshop’s Clone Stamp Tool, the sample area travels with the restored area. It is therefore important to take charge of the sample area and resample the same regularly. This will not have the same pattern and will make the photo look better.
If you keep in mind the above mentioned points, you will surely excel in photo retouching. There may be many more pointers that you might come across while working on a picture. Remember, the best output is the one that is soothing and appealing to the eyes. It is like a perfect mixture of knowledge and creativity that go together hand in hand. You should explore image editing service provider’s portfolio to see the examples of retouching.
