PROFESSIONAL: HEADSHOT DETAIL RETOUCHING

We offer professional retouching to all our headshot sessions and corporate group headshot. 

In this article we will explain and demonstrate our WASIO faces professional retouching of headshots. 

The main goal of retouching is to correct some imperfections and obtain the best results from a raw camera image. POur professional retouching ensures that each our client looks like the best version of themselves. We do not alter features, we want to make sure each person looks like themselves in our headshots. 

We always maintain proper skin texture, NEVER blur skin to make it look plastic. We use some of the high-end retouching techniques to obtain the best results.

The retouching process is a 3 step process:

1. Post-processing in Capture One or Adobe Lightroom - in these photo editing software we ensure proper color, details in highlights and shadows, color toning, initial sharpening

2. Detail editing in Adobe Photoshop - detail editing of skin, fly away hair/stray hairs, imperfections, uneven skin tones, enhancing eyes, teeth whitening if needed, clothing fixes. Because of the high end lighting and proper positioning of our studio lights, red-eye situation is non-existing. Red-eye issue appears only when light points directly into the eye which we never do. Wrinkle remover is done in a very delicate way to avoid removal of skin texture. This ensure natural skin texture in our photos. Removing skin texture creates very cheap "filter" effect that looks un-professional and dated.

3. Preparation and exporting of images for final delivery - this is a critical step to make sure your headshots look the best on social media, LinkedIn, web sites and print. Each usage requires slight different files optimization/resolution/compression. We often add subtle noise to our photos so that the gradual tones are presented properly on the web

WHITE BACKGROUND HEADSHOTS

When photographing modern headshot against white backdrop it is critical that the white backdrop is not over-exposed. Over exposed white background will create glow and light spill resulting in washed out details and lower contrast that is often not possible to fix in post production. 

That is why we photograph white backdrop slightly darker and make it fully white in our editing stage. Through our expertise we determined this yields the best results for white backdrop headshots.