Should Your Staff Headshots Be Edited?

Headshots are there to show your best. The camera shows every little details and highlights minor flaws that you would never notice when talking face to face. So it is usual practice to edit and retouch your headshot to bring it more in line with the real life impression of you.

Sydney professional female corporate headshots in studio

Some headshot photographers in Sydney do not include editing and retouching in their quote. Do you need it?

These are the things a professional photographer does to your portrait to bring it from the camera to a finished state:

Adjust light levels
Adjust color balance
Crop to the consistent size
Basic Retouching
In depth manual retouching
Facial sculpting
Clothing touch ups
Background touch ups
Specific styling

But all of these steps are optional. There is no rule of how much a headshot photographer includes, and what is an add-on extra.

What is normally provided?

Few people give you a file right out of camera. You’ll be shocked how it looks. A restaurant analogy is a chef who cuts the raw ingredients then leaves it in a pile for you to cook yourself.

Most headshot photographers will complete at least a basic lighting and color adjustment, as the end user does not have calibrated wide gamut screens to do it themselves.

After this, it all depends on who you choose. Some will charge you an hourly or per photograph editing fee. If you thought you saved money upfront, you may be surprised how quickly it adds up afterwards.

Our default retouching is to make you look your best, but recognisable. Our aim is to reduce or remove things that you wouldn’t notice in a 15 minute face to face meeting. The result is a photograph you can show to friends and family, and they won’t think you’ve been retouched.

What is Cropping?

Consistency is important. Due to different heights and sizes of people’s faces, cropping correctly has a huge effect on how your brand is perceived. It can be done by your web developer or headshot photographer.

We provide a slightly wider crop so you can cut in depending on where the headshot will be used. We also give you a guide when we deliver your files. It shows you different examples on how to get the most effective crop for different uses.

Sydney professional male corporate headshots in studio

What is Retouching?

Basic retouching could be an automated one-touch filter run across all staff. It’s fast and cleans up blemishes caught by the camera, but generally results in faces that look plastic and unnatural. It could also remove permanent things like beauty spots, or leave in acne.

Manual retouching is adapting techniques to each individual person for the best effect. Each face is different so there is no way to give a blanket answer. Some people may need a lot of skin retouching while others need very little. One shot may take 2 or 20 minutes to complete. But surprisingly they all look consistent at the end. Many photographers will not spend this time and effort on mass staff headshots – so it’s important to ask.

Retouching Red Skin

Correcting red skin is one of many steps in the workflow. Most people don’t realise they have patches of red skin in parts of their face. It’s sometimes more pronounced during the dry winter, or may be affected by allergies and other environmental factors. You often don’t see it in lower resolution photos from a phone.

Clearing this up is an important but manual task of a headshot photographer. Many headshot photographers in Sydney do not do this, and leave you with a photograph like on the left.

After red skin reduction you get the image on the right, which looks much closer to the real person.

These are more pronounced examples, but it affects most Caucasian and Asian skin types to a degree.

In both cases I think you will agree the retouched result is far better and worth a little investment.

Other Retouching

There are other levels of retouching we perform, and it changes depending on each person’s needs. Here is another example of editing in headshot for dark eye sockets and skin blemishes.

Summary

We recommend Fine Touch retouching to all staff. Often they ask us if we will do editing, and are visibly relieved when they hear the company has included it. Think of the benefits to morale this small gesture makes.

Your staff will look at their headshots daily for the next ~5 years. They will think about it each time they send an email. Do you want them to hate the photograph you provided?

More importantly, your directors will get retouching. What message does it send when the other staff are treated differently?

A little investment could instead give them a headshot that’s so enjoyable and effortless, that all their friends compliment. What would that do to their confidence and satisfaction?

Executive Images provides Staff Headshot Photography at your business location in Sydney. Contact us now and let us help your staff look and feel their best every day.