Photoshopping guests ok?

[tim]

I have a photo of a guest at a wedding who's quite a pretty girl, but has lots of freckles and misc blemishes. Just to see how it looks I got rid of them, and it's a big improvement.

My instinct says not to do the print for the B&G with the improvements, but I wondered what everyone else's opinions were.

[italianfemmy]

My opinion is that if she has A LOT of freckles to reduce the freckles and get rid of all blemishes, so you are keeping her natural features to some degree but enhancing them. If she has only a small amount of freckles, keep 'em and get rid of blemishes. ;-)

[italianfemmy]

Can you post before and after also?

[Banbert]

General rule I have used in my very short wedding photography career to date and plan to use going foreward (until I see someone with a better idea) is as follows...

1. If they are freckles, moles or other permanent marks leave them alone.
2. If they look like spots, blemishes or other non permanent marks touch them up
3. Ignore the above 2 rules if the client specifically asks for something to be removed or adjusted and just do whatever they ask for.

Tis a tricky one trying to guess how someone feels about these adjustments aint it.

[DocFrankenstein]

Don't do it.

Disregarding the moral reasons, it's extra time and money from the business side of things and they're not paying you to retouch the guests.

[islandphoto]

yes - please post :)

[InverseX]

How I see it is that you're not going to offend someone by showing how they are, however you run the risk of offending someone by altering how they are.

Why risk it?

[th3r0m]

I agree with Banbert. People are used to seeing the person this way, so they will expect the freckles (or any other permanent cosmetic feature) to be there. Probably might not even recognize them without the freckles. Also, were you to show the b&g and they liked it and then showed it to guest, could cause the guest to get a complex about her freckles, then you would be responsible for putting a guest in therapy to overcome the complex :)

[tim]

I've reduced them a bit, but i'm not going to remove them. I go with the same thing as Bambert usually, removing only temporary marks. I'm not going to post an image sorry, I don't have a model release for the guests and I doubt they'd be happy if they saw the image.

[PIXI_666]

I showed my mum how handy photoshop was in getting rid of wrinkles.....she looked at them both side by side, and to my surprise she came back to me with "No, i prefer me with wrinkles...its who i am, i dont want to be something im not"
And coming from someone who has always had soooo many freckles on my face (They are mostly faded now) if somebody post processed my freckles off my face, it would just depress me......just being honest but i was so self conscious of it, that if someone took the effort to do that, like i did with my mum, then it just looks like it was a problem to start with - you know what im saying? So anyway i printed up the one of my mum wrinkles and all - its who she is, like she said!!!

Del

[Grace]

I've reduced them a bit, but i'm not going to remove them. I go with the same thing as Bambert usually, removing only temporary marks. I'm not going to post an image sorry, I don't have a model release for the guests and I doubt they'd be happy if they saw the image.


your a smart cookie tim! i knew you'd do the right thing.