Motive Retouching: Professional Headshot Retouching, Actor and Model Photo Retouch and Picture Touch Up Services in Los Angeles that Beat Photographers

[Posted by the Motive Retouching Team] When some people hear the word “retouching,” they automatically think that it’s all about deception, lying, or “cheating.” Needless to say (but we’ll say it anyway), this is NOT true!

So we wanted to set the record straight about retouching and specifically about the philosophy we here at Motive Retouching employ with all of our work.

To us, retouching is an art, and our canvas is you, the actor. You have the makeup artist, the photographer, and the retoucher: we all are artists whose job it is to show off the best “you” we can. The difference being that the retoucher’s work happens after the headshot’s been taken.

In our minds, your headshots should show off what you’d look like on your best day at the time the photo was taken. That means the temporary conditions affecting your headshot, such as blemishes, stray hairs, strange lighting that yellows your eyes or teeth, bags under the eyes, or wrinkles that stand out because of the lighting, are our main targets. This is what we call Standard retouching, and we think it’s all you’ll need. In fact, this is directly from our rates page:

All images see a tremendous improvement with our Standard service (so much that Custom retouching is rarely, if ever, recommended). This service generally includes, but is not limited to: blemish removal, eye enhancement (including under the eyes), line softening, skin tone evening, teeth whitening, fly away taming, color correction, and color enhancement.

If other minor required services are discovered in the retouching process, we’ll do them for free.

Do some retouchers use heavy tactics that can be deceptive? Of course. Making a person’s face look perfectly porcelain smooth (usually people mean exactly this when they mistake retouching for “airbrushing”), removing any permanent features or scars, or changing a person’s body shape are all possible. And in different fields (like pageants or more commercial work), this is permissible.

But in Hollywood, the industry looks down on people who falsify their headshots. If you don’t look like the person in the picture, you’ve hurt your chances more than a tastefully retouched headshot would have (and it wouldn’t have hurt, it only would have helped).

That’s why we generally encourage our clients to stick with Standard retouching as opposed to Custom retouching, as detailed on our rates page. However, should you feel that some Custom work is appropriate, we’re glad to do it. We simply feel that this decision is best made by the client after knowing our views and philosophies.

Knowing how we feel about retouching and how seriously we take our craft and art form, you know you’ll get the professional service you require (and not pay for services you don’t) when you choose Motive Retouching.