portraits

Deciding whether or not to retouch your family portraits follows a similar thought process as for individual portraits. But there are a few added considerations since a family portrait is usually a group photo. Here are a few things to consider:

Purpose of the Portrait

If your family portrait is for something formal like a holiday card, a website, or a living room wall, a little retouching can help enhance the image while maintaining a natural look. Common adjustments might include softening harsh lighting, evening out skin tones, or removing temporary blemishes.

For a family portrait that’s for personal use, retouching isn’t usually necessary. A family photo is more about the moment captured than perfection.
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Around 2008, a photographer-friend, who owned a portrait studio, started getting customers who wanted dating profile portraits. Cellphone cameras were becoming popular back then, but many people wanted higher quality photos with better lighting. Shooting online dating photos became a popular service at his studio.

When he closed his studio at the end of 2019, he said that the demand for shooting dating photos had dropped to zero. My friend speculated that, because cellphone cameras had become so much better, most people were using cellphone photos for their dating profiles.

Yesterday I retouched two cellphone selfies for someone who said the images were for her dating profile. The image quality was pretty good because she had used a recent cellphone. But there were problems.
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Deciding whether or not to retouch your portrait depends on the purpose of the image and your personal preferences. Here are a few things to consider:

Purpose of the Portrait

If your portrait is going to be used for professional use (e.g., on a business website or a LinkedIn profile) then a polished image is essential to help convey professionalism. Some level of retouching is a common practice such as skin smoothing, removing blemishes, and brightening the eyes. Just to be clear, “skin smoothing” is not a glamour glow or a soft-focus effect. Skin smoothing evens colour and luminance tones.
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A recent Spanish study, published November 2024, confirmed once again that people whose portraits are perceived as attractive are also seen as more intelligent and trustworthy.

The study used 462 pairs of portraits, each showing a person before and after a beauty filter was applied. The photos were rated by 2,748 participants, aged 18 to 88, with an equal number of males and females from the UK, US, and Canada. The participants were shown random subsets of the portraits, but never both versions of the same photo.

The results were clear: portraits with the beauty filter consistently received higher ratings for traits like intelligence, trustworthiness, and sociability.
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Here are eight reasons why you should consider retouching for your family photos:

Enhance Image Quality

Professional retouching can correct issues such as poor lighting, shadows, or dull colours, and bring out the true beauty of your photo. This will help the image look vibrant and sharp, especially when printed.
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Here are a few reasons why you should have your business headshot or other professional portrait retouched:

Correct lighting, colour and contrast

Retouching can correct uneven lighting, minimize unwanted shadows, and adjust the colour balance, contrast and saturation. This will create a more visually appealing portrait that will draw more attention.

Enhance colour

This is more than correcting the colour. Colour correction means whites are white, greys are neutral grey, and blacks are black. Colour balance, also called colour grading, is adjusting the hue of each colour. Should your skin be a warm tone or a cooler tone? A warm tone suggests friendliness but a cool tone implies authority and strength. What shade of blue works best for your blue shirt: navy blue, cobalt blue, a warm blue, a cold blue? Colour affects our emotion which affects our perception.
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Young people, particularly teenagers, often want to look older, while as adults, many wish to appear younger.

This paradox of age and appearance has been explored in literature, notably by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1922 with The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. In this tale, a man ages in reverse, born looking like an old man, he becomes progressively younger until his death as an infant. A 2008 film starring Brad Pitt loosely adapted this story.

Time, however, only flows in one direction. Any attempts to reclaim youth are fleeting and superficial.
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