Editing is a great part of a photographer’s work. A one day shooting automatically implies several days of retouching work. Of course, the amount of time that is necessary depends on the shooting and images themselves and it can vary a lot. Editing can be fun, at least when you start doing the first pictures and see the result. After a while, it can surely get exhausting as your back and eyes get stressed from sitting and staring as well as your hand starts hurting.

The most fun part during editing is liquifying, at least that’s what I think, which means that you can shape everything with ease by just grabbing a part of the picture and moving it a little bit. That’s how models become even thinner than they already are. It also helps when clothes are not fitting well, etc. Liquifying happens at the very beginning of the editing process. After that, you can eliminate little imperfections like stray hair or replace some parts with others, e.g. in the background.

Then you start optimizing the complexion. There are several methods for that. The frequency separation is very popular and ranks among the most professional beauty retouching methods. I sure use it too, but it got less and less by now. With frequency separation people risk to – and often do – over-retouch the skin because they get involved too much in its structure and feel like every pore should get smaller. The result can look like a doll’s skin, even though they didn’t plan it.

The other method to do skin retouching in photoshop is using a beauty layer. The layer is empty at first and all the new information gets saved on it, so it works like a concealer in the end. You can take information from the “healthy skin” of the layers below and stamp it onto the empty layer without switching between them. The advantage here is that you can keep in mind that you will only do the bare necessities and easily split up your work into several layers if you want to. Of course, this can be overdone too and of course, I did so at first. And now that’s your advantage if you want to do the quiz below. Those layers (with the lower layers turned off) show the retouched skin without eyes, hair, etc. They can reveal which picture’s editing process you are dealing with. The more I edited, the more you can see on the layer.

As I said, I always try to reduce retouch to the minimum up to the present day. That means that the newer images are harder to be identified because there is less to see on the layer. Therefore, I chose an additional technique for the quiz: the dodging & burning process. The layer(s) for this method is completely gray in the beginning and – let’s say – invisible. When I use the tools “dodge” or “burn”, the image gets brighter or darker there. If I turn off all the other layers, you can see something like a monochrome drawing showing the image in an abstract way. Even more interesting is the combination of the dodge & burn layer with the beauty layer or others, e.g. the upper layer from the frequency separation.

THE QUIZ

Can you guess the original images? Choose A, B, or C and check if you were right.

Here is an example of the beauty layer and the original picture.

START

N°1
Which editorial is this panel from?

A Abbruch 
B Snob
C The Nature of Reality

N°2
Which editorial is this panel from?

A Romy 
B Alp
C Cellar Door

N°3
Which editorial is this panel from?

A Blackout 
B Candy Crush
C Trouble

N°4
Which editorial is this panel from?

A Abbruch 
B Cellar Door
C Snob

N°5
Which editorial is this panel from?

A Nymph 
B The Essence
C Candy Crush

N°6
Which editorial are these panels from?

A Romy 
B Nymph
C Candy Crush

N°7
Which editorial are these panels from?

A Romy 
B Ochrasy
C The Nature of Reality

N°8
Which editorial are these panels from?

A The Essence 
B Trouble
C Romy

N°9
Which editorial is this panel from?

A The Nature of Reality 
B Alp
C The Essence

N°10
Which editorial is this panel from? 

A Trouble 
B Blackout
C Cellar Door

THE RESULTS

How many did you guess right?

Thank you for participating.

Epilogue

If you enjoyed reading this article, or you found it helpful in one way or the other, I would love to know (reach out)! You are also welcome to support my work and writing by donating whichever amount this is worth to you. I will thank you with lots of telepathic love and more interesting journal entries. Cheers!