… So, I went to work with the spot healing brush in Photoshop, then ran the photo through the editing apps FaceApp and Facetune, before proudly sending her the result. Her wrinkles were softened, her eyes were more defined and she looked amazing.
"Oh no, I look way too young," she complained.
Younger without wrinkles? Who'd have thunk?
I don't honestly understand why people want to 'look natural' when 'looking natural' means looking worse, but there you have it. In a world where people love to use Instagram filters, 'natural' is what most clients ask for. I guess maybe they feel as though glamorized versions of themselves are presenting a false image to the world, and the real them is a bit… I dunno, catfishy? In my view, they just look much better, not inhuman and not like a different person.
But it's not just clients – old-school photographers don't approve of retouching, either. "I try to get it as good as possible in the camera," one tells me, to which I'm like: surely all photographers do that? I mean, retouching can't fix a truly terrible photo. Edit it all you like, but if the basic composition is lacking, you'd be better off spending your time taking another shot.
Retouching isn't 'cheating', as truly old-school photographers seem to think – it's just enhancing and beautifying. It's getting the most out of a photo, just like using the adjustment filters in Photoshop (everyone does that, right?).
Except that, with apps like Facetune and FaceApp, you don't need to spend ages using the dodge tool to whiten eyes and teeth, because they do it at the touch of a button. Ditto eyelashes, eyebrows, tanning, and making hair silky. An editing function that could take 20 minutes in Photoshop won't even take 20 seconds on the apps.
Much as I'd love to, I won't use examples of client before-and-afters here to illustrate, because I'll never work again as a photographer if I do. So I'll use some before-and-afters of me, because I'm not going to sue myself – please forgive the phone selfie! (It's an iPhone 14 Pro Max, since you ask.)
This first one is a bit too "AI" for my liking – nobody has skin this perfect. I look kind of robotic, like I'm going to order the destruction of all humankind.
So I dialed the editing back a bit – a light touch is what you need – and put the texture back into my skin, while making myself look a lot more glam:
I'm really proud of the next example, because I honestly don't think you can tell the 'after' shot has been edited, it looks so natural. Admittedly a different starting image:
But the biggest and best change was to the cover of my debut solo pop album, Better. (You can find the album on Apple Music, Spotify, or Bandcamp.)
It's a maternal album about my love for my 13-year-old daughter, Lily. She had taken a selfie of us, which I used as the cover, but this was before I got into photography and photo editing. I cringe when I look at the original now.
It's a good photo – or at least, it has great potential – but I can see numerous things wrong with it: my frizzy hair looks like I've had a fight with a hedge, I've got lipstick on my teeth, and the acne scarring on my chin resembles the surface of Mars.
That's before we come to the jewel of my maang tikka headpiece being skew-whiff between my eyes, the whites of my eyes themselves being red, and my eyebrows being a little patchy. I look like a Bollywood reject, while my daughter, who is perfect, has a slight redness to her face due to it being a cold February day.
I knew the photo needed retouching, but accepted I wasn't a professional retoucher, so sent the photo off for beauty and hair retouching on Fiverr. And the below was the alarming result! The guy was lovely and was doing his best, but I'm not sure what he's done to this photo. Both my daughter and I look grubby, like we need a good bath. I asked for my hair to be 'glossy and shiny', and instead I got 'straggly and stringy'. "We look really weird," said my daughter.
So adhering to the old adage, 'If you want a job doing well, do it yourself', I decided to have a go – and I'm really pleased with the results. I straightened the jewel on my maang tikka, which looks a lot better, while my daughter's eyes pop, showcasing their natural beauty and unusual amber-green color.
My face is slimmer, my eyebrows a solid color, my eyes are white with eye makeup that really works, my acne scars have vanished, my hair is shiny and de-frizzed, and I no longer have lipstick on my teeth. Also, Lily's face is less red and back to her natural golden color. Hallelujah! I actually look like a pop star, or like I could get work as a Bollywood actress. (I couldn't, I'm a fraud who can't speak Hindi.)
Anyhow: I hope I've demonstrated how retouching is an art that can elevate a photo, rather than some kind of photographer cheat code that purists should disapprove of. What's the difference between altering the curve and temperature in Photoshop and getting rid of some acne scars or adding eyelashes in Facetune? They're equally 'artificial'. And why not use both to take your photos to the next level?
If a photographer ever asked me, "Do you want me to get rid of your wrinkles?", I'd reply, "Please retouch the shit out of them." And I'd mean it. Because if you can (no pun intended), why not look better?
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Check our guide the best cameras for beginners. Read about taking the original album photos in Taking photos for my debut album wasn't the same as it was for The Beatles!
