Chapter Eleven. Retouching Portraits

Last year I had the opportunity to photograph one of the top-ranked triathletes in the world. My assignment was to create a telling portrait for a major publication. When I started planning the shot, my first thought was, how do I capture the essence of this athlete and make him look good?

When you stop to think about it, much of a photographer’s work with portrait photography is to use the specific environments, lighting, perspectives, and Photoshop techniques that help make a subject look good. The important fact to keep in mind is that different genres of photography require different types of retouching. You do not simply retouch an image because you can. Rather, you retouch to fit the parameters of the genre and the goal of the image. For example, the level of skin smoothing you might do varies, depending on whether the subject is a high-end fashion model or a rural farmer.