Keep what is permanent, remove what is passing

The one rule that resolves most decisions

Remove what would be gone in a fortnight. Keep what would still be there.

A spot, a stray hair across the face, a bit of lint on a collar, a smudge of mascara, the shine from a hot light: all temporary. Nobody, including the subject, thinks of those as part of how they look.

A mole, a scar, a birthmark, freckles, laughter lines, the shape of a nose: permanent. Removing those is not retouching the photograph, it is editing the person.

The rule is not absolute (a subject may ask for a scar removed, and that is their call about their own image) but as a default it resolves ninety per cent of the judgements, and it is a defensible answer when a client asks why you did not smooth something.

An order that works

1. Develop first. Exposure, white balance, lens correction. Retouching on a badly white-balanced file means matching colours you are about to change.
2. Blemishes, on an empty layer with Sample All Layers on. Spot healing for isolated marks, clone for anything near an edge.
3. Stray hairs. Clone stamp with a small soft brush, sampling along the hair’s own direction rather than across it.
4. Frequency separation for the tonal unevenness that remains.
5. Dodge and burn for shaping: this is where a portrait actually improves.
6. Eyes, teeth, lips, each locally and lightly.
7. Global tone and colour.
8. Output sharpening, at final size, masked off the skin.

Notice that the smoothing steps come before the shaping. Shaping on top of already-smoothed skin reads as drawn; shaping first and smoothing after removes the shaping you just did.

The specific areas, and what actually helps

Eyes. The whites of eyes are not white. They are a pale, slightly grey or slightly warm tone with visible blood vessels. Brightening them towards white is the single most recognisable amateur move.

What helps instead: a small desaturation of the redness, at 20 to 30 per cent, on a masked Hue/Saturation layer. Then a very slight lift in contrast on the iris, and a gentle burn round the outer edge of the iris, which is naturally darker and makes the eye read as round. Leave the catchlight (the reflection of the light source) exactly as it is; a painted catchlight is obvious, and removing one kills the eye.

Under-eye shadows. These are structure, not a blemish. The eye socket is recessed. Remove the shadow entirely and the face goes flat and strange. Reduce it: a healing or dodge pass at 30 to 40 per cent of what you first thought, and stop.

Teeth. The same error as eyes. Teeth are not white; they are off-white and vary. Desaturate the yellow slightly with a masked Hue/Saturation on Yellows, lift the brightness a little, and stop. Uniformly white teeth read as dentures at any size.

Skin shine. A hot spot from a flash or a window. The right tool is not a blur or a heal; it is a burn on the grey Soft Light layer, which brings the tone down while keeping the texture. A blurred shine leaves a smooth patch where the brightest skin texture was.

Flyaway hair. Clone along the hair’s direction. For hairs crossing the background, it is usually easier to clone the background over them than to attempt to preserve them.

Fabric and background. People notice a crumpled collar and a distracting object behind the head far more than they notice a pore. Spend the time there.

The restraint mechanism: finish, then reduce

The technique that reliably prevents over-retouching, used by working retouchers: do the retouch fully, put it on its own layer or group, then drop the group’s opacity to 50 to 70 per cent.

This works because judgement drifts during the work. After forty minutes at 200 per cent zoom every remaining mark looks intolerable, and the version that looked right at minute forty looks processed the next morning. Reducing at the end corrects for the drift without redoing anything.

The second check: look at the before and after at fit-to-screen, quickly toggled. If the change is noticeable as a change rather than as a better photograph, it is too much.

Consent, and who decides

A portrait is of a person, and the person has a view.

• Ask before you start, not after. “Is there anything you would like me to leave alone?” takes one sentence and prevents the situation where you have removed the scar somebody is proud of.
• A commercial client is not the subject. A brand commissioning a portrait does not own the subject’s opinion about their own face. Where those conflict, say so.
• Children. Retouching a child’s appearance is a different matter again, and a good default is not to, beyond removing temporary marks.
• Do not retouch to a standard. The instruction “make them look good” does not mean “make them look like the composite face of advertising”. Thinner, lighter, younger, smoother is a direction with a lot of momentum behind it, and it is worth noticing when you have drifted into it by default rather than by request.

The free path

Everything in this lesson works in GIMP and Krita. GIMP’s Heal tool is good, its clone tool with Sample merged works on an empty layer, and Wavelet Decompose covers frequency separation. Krita’s Smart Patch handles blemishes well and its brush engine is better than Photoshop’s for dodge-and-burn work on a tablet.

On a phone, Snapseed’s Healing tool and its selective adjustments cover most of what a casual portrait needs, non-destructively, free.

The limit

Retouching cannot fix a bad photograph of a person. Unflattering light, a moment caught between expressions, a lens too close to the face: those are capture problems, and every hour spent retouching them is an hour not spent taking another frame.

The fastest improvement available to almost anyone photographing people is not a retouching technique at all. It is a bigger, softer light source and a longer lens from further away.