Fashion retouching

Learning goal

While bringing a fashion frame to the standard a brand and a publication want, you will be able to tell what is corrected and what is protected. You will read the brand's or the publication's retouching rules from a written list, and base every decision on this list. You will clean the lint, the thread ends, the unwanted creases and the clips visible in the frame from the fabric, but protect the fabric's real texture and drape. You will match a garment's color to the real fabric swatch in your hand by comparing the two in the same light. While changing the garment's color, you won't touch the models' skin; you will leave the skin in its own true color.

The question

The list from the magazine has three items: the jackets' colors must match the collection's real colors exactly; the lint, thread ends and marks left on set must be cleaned from the fabrics; faces and skin must be left as they are. To correct the mustard jacket's color, your friend shifts the orange and the yellow; the jacket comes to the right color, but both models' faces turn pale at once. The clip at the back of the sweater still shows. How do fabric, skin and color all stay right together?

Context

In the portrait retouching lesson you learned the retouching list, talking with a person at the screen about what will change and what will stay, and putting the decisions in writing (Lesson P.12). In the naturalness and limits lesson you also discussed how retouching can make a face unrecognizable, and how the same retouching can be acceptable or unacceptable depending on where it is used (Lesson 21.8). In the catalog and delivery lesson, you shot a card with measured colors at the start of each session and set the colors in the right place (Lesson U.10).

In fashion retouching this knowledge splits in two: the garment is a product and must look right, as in the catalog; the person is a person and must look like themselves. The skill of retouching is working without mixing these two areas up.

Simple explanation

Who draws the limit of retouching?

Retouching guidelines are a document that sets out in writing which corrections can and can't be made in a brand's or a publication's frames. They may say that garment cleanup, color matching and background corrections are free; that skin color, body and face shape can't be changed, and that only temporary marks, a pimple or a scratch, can be removed. Some publications and brands also explain these rules to their readers.

The guidelines save the photographer from re-debating every decision, and tie retouching approval to a system. If there are no guidelines, they are discussed with the client and the models before the shoot and put in writing. Even a change the guidelines allow, if it is something the model clearly doesn't want, is first talked over with them. The guidelines draw not a floor but a frame; the decisions within it are still left to the eye of the photographer and the team.

What is cleaned on the fabric?

Garment cleanup is removing the lint, thread ends, unwanted creases, dust spots and marks from things used on set, like clips, pins or tape, from a garment, without touching the fabric's real texture and drape. A white piece of lint on a dark wool jacket stands out in a large print; a thread sticking out at the edge of a collar gives the impression that the stitching is poor. These don't belong to the product itself and are removed.

The limit is in the fabric itself. The irregular stitches of a coarse knit sweater, the natural wrinkling of a linen shirt or the slightly fuzzy surface of wool are that fabric's real state; correcting them misleads the reader about the product. The cleanup is done one by one, with a small brush and at high magnification; a smoothing applied to the whole fabric turns the knit into a plastic surface. The clip at the back is covered by taking texture from a neighboring area of the fabric, and the sweater's drape at that spot is protected.

How does a garment's color come out right?

Swatch color matching is bringing a garment's color in the photograph to that of a piece taken from the garment's real fabric, by comparing the two in the same light. The screen must be calibrated; the fabric swatch is held beside the screen in a known light close to daylight. The color checker target shot at the start of the session sets the overall color in the right place, while matching fine-tunes each garment's own tone.

The trap of matching is in the skin. Most human skin, from light to dark, sits between orange and yellow on the color wheel. Shifting the orange and yellow channels across the whole frame to correct a mustard jacket shifts all the skin along with it: one skin tone turns pale, another turns green or leans toward gray. That is why color matching is done only inside a mask drawn on the garment. The skin is checked separately, against each model's own skin reference, and unless the guidelines say otherwise, left untouched.

Visual evidence

Your friend turns the list from the magazine into retouching guidelines and shows them to the models too. The dark-skinned model asks for a small scratch on her forehead to be removed; the light-skinned model says to keep her freckles. Both are written into the guidelines.

The clip at the back of the sweater is covered with knit taken from the side of the sweater; the stitches continue unbroken. Three white pieces of lint and a thread end on the navy jacket's collar are removed one by one, while the wool's slightly fuzzy surface stays as it is. The linen shirt's wrinkles aren't touched; the designer says that is the nature of linen.

Then the mustard jacket. The designer brings a piece of the fabric, and your friend holds it beside the calibrated screen under a lamp close to daylight. They draw a mask around the jacket and shift the color only inside the mask, until it looks the same as the fabric swatch. The rest of the frame doesn't change: both models' skin escapes the paleness of the first try and returns to its own warmth.

In one frame the designer notices that the jacket sits loose at the model's waist and asks for it to be taken in in retouching. The guidelines forbid changing body and garment shape; pulling the fabric in means changing the model's body too. Your friend takes that frame out of the series and puts in its place a frame where the stylist pinned the jacket at the back.

Common mistakes

Summary

Fashion retouching is, within the frame drawn by retouching guidelines, removing the temporary marks on the product with garment cleanup while protecting its real texture, and bringing the garment's color to the real fabric with swatch color matching. The garment's color is changed only in its mask, and the skin stays real according to each model's own reference and consent.

Mini assignment

The fashion and editorial track's closing project is completed with this assignment: you will build a small fashion series of six to eight frames from start to finish.

1. Prepare a moodboard, a shoot concept and a color palette; gather a small team with a call sheet, and get the models' and locations' releases in writing.
2. Shoot your series in at least two different lights or locations; make sure no garment is missing in the look plan, and write the fashion credits for each frame.
3. Write retouching guidelines together with the models; do the garment cleanup one by one, match the garment colors to the real fabric inside a mask, and check each model's skin against their own reference.

Check yourself

• Does every retouching decision in your series rest on an item written in the guidelines?
• Do the fabrics, once cleaned, keep their real texture and drape?
• Do the garments' colors match the real fabric, and does the models' skin stay in its own color?

Glossary

Mini quiz

1. What do retouching guidelines give the photographer?

• A) Relying on a written frame without re-debating every decision
• B) Doing retouching fully automatically
• C) No need for the models' consent
• D) Shooting in less time

2. What is done with a linen shirt's natural wrinkling?

• A) It is removed entirely
• B) It is smoothed as if ironed
• C) It is protected, because it is the fabric's real state
• D) It is hidden by turning the frame black and white

3. Why does shifting a mustard jacket's color across the whole frame affect the skin?

• A) Because the jacket casts a shadow on the skin
• B) Because most skin sits between orange and yellow
• C) Because the camera records skin in a mustard color
• D) Because the screen isn't calibrated

4. How is a garment's color matched to the real fabric?

• A) According to the color in memory
• B) By looking at an old photo in the catalog
• C) By raising the screen's brightness
• D) By comparing the fabric swatch beside a calibrated screen in a known light

Answers

1. A — The guidelines say in advance what is free and what is forbidden, and tie approval to a system.
2. C — Changing the fabric's texture misleads the reader about the product.
3. B — A change in a color range shifts everything in that range, skin included.
4. D — A side-by-side comparison in the same light shows whether the color matches the real fabric.

Summary card

• Retouching guidelines: what is free and what is forbidden, in writing; shared with the models.
• Garment cleanup: lint, thread, set marks one by one; texture and drape protected.
• Swatch color matching: the real fabric, a calibrated screen, a known light.
• The garment's color changes only in the garment's mask.
• Skin sits in the orange–yellow range; by its own reference, untouched.

Bridge to the next lesson

After the collection is published in the magazine, your friend goes on holiday to a cove for a week. When they dive with a snorkel, they see their swimsuit, bright red on the shore, turn brown a few meters down, then gray; the colors of the coral at the bottom are completely different from how they look from above. How does water swallow light? The underwater track begins with why, and in what order, colors disappear with depth and distance.