Professional Photo Retouching

Retouching is the process of making an image ready for final presentation. This process can require a variety of techniques and processes, and it can be very subtle or dramatic – every image that you see online or in print catalogs has undergone some retouching.

Here we present to you the A to Z’s of product image retouching

Understanding this retouching glossary will give you a holistic view of the post-production process.  We will start with general retouching terms like removing the background, clipping path, alignment, sizing, etc. which are used for almost all product categories.  Then we will move on to particular categories like Apparel, Jewelry, Footwear, and Model Photography and Retouching.

Table of Contents

General Retouching

There are several basic retouching processes which can be applied to all kinds of products, be it electronics or jewelry. These are essential for making your product images e-commerce compliant and presentable. The goal is ultimately to make the customer focus only on the product and not on other distracting things.

Typically general retouching involves

Apparel Retouching

Apparel Photo Retouching helps your apparel look elegant, appealing and amazing. Apparel e-com industry is very large, and you need exceptionally stunning pictures of your apparel to make an impact on consumers. Retouching is essential to enhance your images. There are many processes which fall into this category, including, but not limited to, the invisible mannequin, improvement of shape, color, smoothening of fabric to making the apparel look more symmetric.

Typically apparel retouching involves-

Footwear Retouching

Typically footwear retouching involves-

1. Shoe Cleanup
2. Shoe Fix Lacing
3. Shoe Flip
4. Removal of marks, size numbers, tags

 

Furniture Retouching

Furniture retouching instills a new life in your furniture’s images by removing unflattering elements like stains, flash, background, etc. Retouching cleans up the distractions – glare, shadows, highlights – with retouching, the shape becomes better defined!

Typically furniture retouching involves-

Jewelry Retouching

Jewelry photography is considered among the most difficult types of images to edit in the realm of product photography. The camera typically does not capture all intricacies of jewelry items – hence images tend to require significant Photoshop work. Breathtaking images of jewelry are usually the result of processes such as spot and scratch removal, color, brightness, sharpness improvement, white background implementation etc.

Typically jewelry retouching involves-

Model Retouching

On product photographs with models, aspects that may distract the attention from the product are most commonly retouched. Model retouching is important to bring in consistency and maintain the overall aesthetics of the image.

Model retouching typically involves any of the following: removing bruises, marks, blemishes, tattoos, or unwanted hair, toning the skin or slimming down the body, among others.