Professional Corporate Headshot Retouching Tampa Bay

The retouching on your corporate headshot is just as important as the image itself. It can be hard to know what a good retouch looks like because there are so many different styles and extremes. It can be all to easy for your professional portrait to come out looking like an obvious “photoshop” job and you don’t want that. You want the image to be professional, attractive and the best representation of you without looking like it was painted.

Key areas of retouching in your professional headshot

  • Skin – Blemishes should be removed and some skin smoothing applied but not so much that you look waxy and unreal.
  • Eyes – Bags should be lessened but not completely removed. Even babies have bags. You just want to look a little younger, not alien. Sometimes the eyes need to be brightened a bit because the brow can cause a shadow.
  • Hair – Stray hair and flyaways need to be tamed but again, not completely. Otherwise, you look like you’re wearing a hair helmet.

Headshot Retouching Example

For this example, I’m going to use my own picture. I don’t like to show “before/after” images that are clients. This image was done for a video on my YouTube channel:

unretouched

Hover over the image to see the original image

I retouch my own face the same as my clients.

My eyes require more work than most because I have a pretty big brow. I have a cave-man level brow and it tends to cast a shadow on my eyes so I have to bring that up a bit.

I remove blemishes and generally make my skin look better and clean up my hair. Notice I leave a few blemishes? I want the viewer to think that I’m not retouched at all so I leave a couple of “imperfections.”

The under-eye bags are lessened but not removed.

For this image I also changed the background to pure white. Photographing with a pure white background often causes problem with the image because of reflected light so I usually get close “in-camera” and then take it the rest of the way in retouching.

The right retouch is crucial

A great professional headshot is a whole process. The right clothes, the right pose, the right lighting and the right retouch all combine to make an image that lasts for years.