[Ado]

Im looking into getting into retouching and just wanted to know what people really need to know before they can do it professionally?
Obviously I know photoshop but what specifics are needed to be known?

[art_director]

A good retoucher understands the printing process as well as their specific image manipulation skills. If you're serious about this as a career try working for a color house / retoucher.

Also, you need to really understand color. You need to live, eat and breathe color.

You should have a firm grasp of film and digital media type and the differences between them.

You should understand, and if possible, be able to operate a drum scanner. IMO the good guys have all the details down even if they aren't the ones scanning all the images.

In a perfect world, and if you're talented, you'd try getting an internship / low level job with this guy:

Brad Palm, über retoucher

IMHO he's the best in the business. I've worked with him many times and have always been blown away.

You should also know there are varying levels of retouching skills and needs. Many ad agencies and some large corporations (ie. Target, Best Buy, etc.) now hire retouchers to tweak color, add shadows to outlined shots, to outline shots, etc. This stuff, while important, isn't the glamorous side of the profession but, it can make for a nice entrée into the Brad Palm level work. If my memory serves, Brad started removing nipples from Victoria Secret models while working for Westin -- a Minneapolis color house.

You could also consider working for / with a photographer. Some of the high end car guys, like Georg Fischer, have a full time guy that travels around the world with him. In his case, the retoucher ships a Mac tower, scanner and monitors everywhere they go. He sits in a five-star hotel in the dark and does nothing but tweak Georg's images.

[Nivag]

make a copy of the file before working on it, just in case you're not happy with the results. i know PS has the history feature, but better to be safe than sorry.

[andi*pandi]

know the targeted press limits, what color % it can hold, etc. For black and white images I was taught 85%/5% black for newsprint, 93%/4% for 133 line screen, etc. (your mileage/modern presses may vary)

[Thorzdad]

Beyond the technical, I'd say you should work hard to develop a fine sense of subtlety and naturalness. Far too many people over-do the effects as well as over-rely on the one-click, automatic effects in Photoshop.
Take a good look at the Brad Palm link art-director posted. Even the obviously fantastic images have a naturalness about them. This is the result of a fine eye for subtlety and detail. You can bet there's a ton of hand-work involved in his retouching. Don't be afraid to take the hands-on route, as opposed to relying on the canned, one-click methods.

[art_director]

Originally Posted by Thorzdad 

Beyond the technical, I'd say you should work hard to develop a fine sense of subtlety and naturalness. Far too many people over-do the effects as well as over-rely on the one-click, automatic effects in Photoshop.
Take a good look at the Brad Palm link art-director posted. Even the obviously fantastic images have a naturalness about them. This is the result of a fine eye for subtlety and detail. You can bet there's a ton of hand-work involved in his retouching. Don't be afraid to take the hands-on route, as opposed to relying on the canned, one-click methods.

That's good sound advice, Thorzdad. In fact, IMO, it's the best given in this thread.

[demograph68]

Don't do this.

[art_director]

Yes, turning people into plastic is a negative.

[andi*pandi]

that's fricking scary.

[art_director]

Jean Bonet, is that you?

[Wiskedjak]

I'm shocked that nothing regarding lens flares has shown up in this thread yet.

[eyevaan]

art_director nailed it. You may already have PS skills and that is good, the dot etchers are dead, and so are most of the pre-PS superstation users, like me. Apprenticeships aren't offered at printshops anymore and the Graphic Arts Unions were all found to be corrupt... So I don't know how you go about finding a true master who may reveal some of their tactics. Good luck, some people get the breaks, if this is really what you want to do, I hope you are one of lucky ones.

@demograph68 - THAT is friggin hilarious!

[warfarer]

The most important thing to remember when doing any kind of photo modifications in Photoshop is the use of copying layers and working on them. Leave your original background layer alone and only work on duplicate layers, you will thank me later.

Second best tip is learning to use the RGB or CMYK color adjustments and your brightness contrast controls. I always find that contrast/brightness is the fastest way to really make a completely different impact on a photo.

[Thorzdad]

Excellent advice, warfarer.
I do a ton of photo editing for an adoption website (pics of couples) and consider the brightness/contrast filter to be one of my dirty-little-secrets for magically fixing a bad photo.

[siMac]

Originally Posted by Thorzdad 

Excellent advice, warfarer.
I do a ton of photo editing for an adoption website (pics of couples) and consider the brightness/contrast filter to be one of my dirty-little-secrets for quickly fixing a bad photo.

Fixed, brightness/contrast is a quick and dirty 'hack' to 'improve' an image. Be careful though because what it actually does is destroy fine details and burn highlights and shadows.

I have been known to use it when batch retouching images double-quick, but never more than +5 on each slider.

A good 'S' curve using Curves will give much better contrast results, and brightness can better be adjusted by moving the middle slider in Levels.

[Thorzdad]

True enough. The images I work with are scaled down to about 154px square, so I'm not overly concerned about really fine details.
You'd be horrified by the initial quality of some of the images supplied by the couples. Some of the worst require severe shifts in the Hue and Saturation levels just to get them close to something I can work with. Anyone who claims digital photography is inherently superior to film hasn't really worked with amateur snapshots. It's the same as it ever was.

[siMac]

LOL, don't get me started!

I like to look in the EXIF data in Photoshop when I get that kind of image to see exactly which digital camera that came free with a magazine subscription or which mobile phone it was taken with.

[Dark Helmet]

Originally Posted by Wiskedjak 

I'm shocked that nothing regarding lens flares has shown up in this thread yet.

Better?

[Thorzdad]

Originally Posted by Dark Helmet 

Better?

Sweet.

[Demonhood]

ha. reminds me of this little girl:

[leanest]

software is very important to this process, having a program that will do what you need and do it well is important.
Also, having a computer to run the software is very important, Keep in mind memory allocation when running the software for best results.

Happy Shopping