Hello, I'm the only retoucher on here who won't touch your images even if you pay me and will never leave you random friend requests or messages saying that I want to retouch your images, etc. etc.

I'm a hobbyist who is kind of half way between a retoucher and a digital artist and who retouches photos only for Personality Imaging, my photographer site on here (63144). If your picture needs work you need to fix it, live with it, or hire someone else because I'm not touching it.

I'm on here just to network and exchange ideas. I don't make a dime at this and am not interested in promoting my brand. I'm not on facebook or instagram either, most of my work is too sexy, mature, and awesome for those sites. I have a personal site but only post family snapshots etc.

I retouch only my own photographs as a hobbyist and that's all. If I ever retouched someone else's image I would feel unclean for the rest of my life no matter how much I showered. Check out my photos at Personality Imaging www.modelmayhem.com/63144 or /drpixel.

I generally don't give model credits on this site because some of the models may not look their best in the "BEFORE" shots and they probably don't want these shots showing up in their credited photos.

I have been a retoucher to some extent for over 50 years. I started by retouching directly on negatives with a single camel hair brush, a loupe, and Spotone. It has come a long way since then. I have also retouched directly on prints, something that is no doubt met with scorn these days. Back then many of my best pictures were ruined with power lines, etc. and there wasn't much that you could do about it. If you wanted a special toning, you bought the chemicals and integrated the toning into the wet processing. Unless you wore gloves the chemicals also toned your hands and finger nails and it was not good socially and there was no social media back then so you couldn't post photos of your brown or blue hands.

Over the last decade I have gone from being able to totally shmoosh all skin details to being able to do frequency separation skin retouches and pretty sophisticated layer operations.

I venture into digital artistry a little but keep it so that it could be real, no transparent pixie wings and pixie dust here. Also, I always start with a photo of a model that I took with a camera, unlike some who start with a model photo taken from deviantart.com or some other internet site.

As for figure shaping, I'll go as far as you want without hurting anyone's feelings. It's not a religious issue with me. Everyone could use a little help. Well almost everyone.

I appreciate all the help I have gotten from the video tutorials from Aaron Nace at phlearn.com and Nathaniel Dodson at tutvid.com.

I'm always looking for good online tutorials, royalty free stock images, overlays, and retouching software, so please let me know if you see any. Also any helpful feedback and ideas are welcome! And you are welcome to be my friend on here without fear of me sending a price list (I don't have one) or anything.

If you want to share an idea or make sure that I won't touch your image you can contact me on here or on gmail at notyourretoucher.

Tags

See All Tags (3)