The Difference between your friend with photoshop and a retoucher

I've been a bit lax with the photo world the last few months with my rollerblading video "Take Your Time" in the works and recently released.  So I thought I'd see what's been up.  Good ol' youtube to the rescue!  When you want to just veg and and visually engage something rather than read through text! ha.

I was last at CS4 and with the new changes in CS6, I'm rather excited!  Not too keen on the new gray backdrop, but content aware moving and patching sounds like a win to me. But you know youtube.  click one thing and you're 5 videos away from what you were actually searching for.  As a friend put it, you can spend all day watching things.  And I did.  Ended up running into this little gem of a video. It's by Gry Garness, out of the UK.

While not my kind of retouching, as I'm not too fond of altering the human body for unrealistic figures, it does show when and how to use certain techniques.  I had no idea about puppet warp, so that's new to me.  But it is interesting figuring out her next moves and wondering why she did what she did.  If I hadn't have seen the before image, I'd have guessed the finished product was how the model looked.  Looks can be deceiving like that. 

It brings home a point that plenty of people have digital cameras and just as many have photoshop.  I've had friends ask for photoshop to make simple color adjustments that could be done in GIMP or even in a built in OS editor.  So they learn enough and say hey, I can retouch photos to their friends.  It gets the job done right?  And they're your friends, why not let them have a hand, pay them with dinner and a beer?  You saved yourself 30-500 dollars for an actual retoucher. And for most, that's good enough.  And then you see what someone with skill has and you're flabbergasted!

The other stance which equally leaves me in awe is when I've been asked to perform unrealistic modifications to a photo.

"Can you make me 9 inches taller, swap my head from this photo and put it on that body, and get rid of the people in the corner?" I'm a photographer, not god.  They get offended when I say I can't do that. "

But it's photoshop, it can do it right?"  I'm sure it can!  But I'd actually have to be an ungodly photoshop wizard to do it, like Gry is.  And if you want that, pay for that skill.  It isn't cheap.

"But I don't need it to be that amazing!" Well, don't expect those kinds of changes.  Either front up for a killer retoucher or lower your expectations.  Magazines, movie studios, ad agencies throw gobs of cash for this kind of work.  98% (imagined number here) of the people with photoshop can't do this kind of work.  And if they can, you can bet they're being paid for it.

Pulling back for a second, there's a story about someone I know who gets praise left and right for their photos from friends.  Mostly because he takes photos of them.  The crops are too tight, perspective lost, rule of thirds out the window, colors rather unnatural, average lighting skills, timing rather off.  He self-promotes excessively.  And from my end, he doesn't have his technical skill down to be able to do so.  But to each their own.

But it tells me a few things.  Most people can't see when an image has been altered.  They're happy as is.  And if you do anything, and they don't notice, they'll assume it's all in camera.  Until they see the original.  I've pulled photos with 20 layers out and done a before and after.  My friend's mouths are agape.  They like the after effect far more, but again, they assumed I was just that good of a photographer.  Nope.  Post-processing.  The same applies to shooting though.  They just want the photo, not that an arm is cropped, or the lighting is bad.  They see the memory.  They see the subject and that's what they want.  Not the technical skill behind it.  So a guy like the aforementioned fellow gets by and gets praise for middle of the road work.  But there's room for all types in photography, which is how he gets by.

What it all comes down to is skill, who you know, and expectations.  If you want top quality work, pay for it.  If you want middle of the road, get by on your friend who may not be Terry White or Scott Kelby (Photoshop gurus) but they''ll do it for a burger.  Just don't be surprised when the photos don't look like they should be in Elle,  Esquire or Ink.