Natural Skin Retouching: How Much Is Too Much

What usually stays

• Pores and fine texture, which are what make skin read as skin.
• Moles, freckles and scars that are part of the person, unless they've asked otherwise.
• Natural variation in color across the face, including the warmth around the nose and cheeks.
• Expression lines, softened if at all.

What usually goes

• Temporary marks: a pimple, a scratch, a razor bump.
• Stray hairs across the skin and makeup that has moved or caked.
• Shine or color casts that came from the lighting rather than the person.
• Patchy tone that a camera exaggerates and an eye in the room wouldn't notice.

How to spot overworked skin

Look at the image at full size and then at the size it will actually be seen. The warning signs are skin with no pores, the same texture repeated across an area, edges that look soft around the nose and eyes, and a face that no longer has any light and shade in it.

Most careful skin work builds on the light that's already there, lightening and darkening small areas by hand. Automatic smoothing is faster, but it's also what makes skin look like plastic.

Put it in the brief

"Natural" means different things to different people, so show it. Send one or two reference images and say what you want kept. If someone in the picture has asked for something left alone or removed, say that too. How to brief a retoucher has a template.

Skin changes can also carry legal weight in advertising. In Norway, for example, any change to skin in an ad requires a label, as retouched image label rules explains. For more on this kind of work, see beauty retouching.