Retouching: Skin

For this week's blog post, I have decided to talk about retouching skin when editing images. I’ve been doing a lot of editing recently, thanks to the lovely photographer Dave Edkins, who has let me have a play around with some images from our recent shoots together.

If you follow me on any social media or if you’re a member of PurplePort, then you’ll know that me and Dave have worked together a LOT over the years. Our working relationship turned in to a friendship, which turned into a business partnership. We now co-run workshops designed for beginner photographers who want the skills to get into model photography. Part of the reason these workshops are so good is because Dave was that beginner photographer when we first worked together all those years ago. If you might be interested in learning more about these workshops then you can click here to learn more.

Anyway, as I was saying before the shameless self promotion, me and Dave have worked together a lot over the years and he has kindly let me have a go at editing some of the images he has taken on our last few shoots together. It’s been loads of fun, and I hadn’t realised how much I'd missed that side of things. All of the images in this post are from our most recent shoot together in July 2025. In the future, I’ll do further blog posts regarding other parts of the editing process, but this post will focus on retouching the skin.

Skin isn’t perfect. No matter how much money you spend, what products you use, or what remedies you try, skin will be skin. Personally, I’ve always struggled with my skin. I have sensitive skin, so I’m limited to what products I can use without having a reaction to it, and being a woman, hormones play a huge role in how my skin looks. I go between break outs and severe dry skin, depending where I am in my menstrual cycle. And let's not mention the effect of lack of sleep and stress.

On top of this, I always struggled to find a foundation that was a good match for my skin. And when I found a good match that didn't cause a reaction, I'd tan over summer and the shade would suddenly be too light, and the next shade in that range would be too dark. Or I'd suddenly develop a reaction to a product I'd been okay to use for months. So I gave up and now just use a face powder. This doesn't offer the same coverage as a foundation, but is much kinder to my skin and generally keeps my skin healthier than it was when I was smothering it in foundation on a regular basis. I'm sure there would be a product out there that I could use but I do't have the money or the time to experiment with them, and I got so sick of wasting money on products that weren't right for me.

I gave up being self conscious about my skin a long time ago though. My skin is what it is, I know I’m doing enough with my skin care routine, drinking enough water and eating skin friendly foods (sure, my diet could be a little better but hey, you only live once and I doubt the odd Oreo or glass of red wine will be having all that much of an effect to be honest).

So, skin is skin and someone people have better skin than others. For those of us with less than perfect skin, editing software comes to the rescue. I'm sure some photographers will not appreciate this attitude to it, but I'm not sorry. I might be a model, but I'm also a human person with a human body... It's not perfect but it's perfectly mine. Love it, or don't: I'm not really bothered what anyone else thinks, as long as I'm happy.

When it comes to editing, everyone will have their own opinions on how much skin smoothing is appropriate. Some people will leave it alone completely, and some people will smooth the hell out of the skin until the model looks like they’re made from plastic (which I think is problematic given unrealistic beauty standards, and also how much AI plays a part in many of the images we see these days). But this post is about my opinion and my editing style, which lies somewhere in the middle.

I don’t like over edited images of myself, because I don't like the thought that people will see images of me and think, “woah, her skin is flawless!” because it’s just not. Or that they'll see it's clearly over-edited and wonder just how bad my skin is. Similarly, I don’t want people to look at images of me and be distracted by my skin (for it being edited too much or not enough) that they don’t take in the entire image and appreciate it for what it is.

I try to edit my images in a way that simply smooths out enough of the imperfections that the whole image is taken in, without giving a false impression of perfection. Getting that balance right is difficult, especially when you’re doing the editing and you're zoomed right in on the skin, in the mindset of removing those blemishes. In my own edits, I still want my skin to look like skin but it’s so easy to get carried away and go overboard.

I’ve done some comparison images of some photos I've played around with recently. There are three images, and for each one, I've shown the finished edit (on the left) compared to the original (on the right). Then below each one, I've included a close up of the retouched face before anything else is changed (on the left) compared to the original (on the right).

Image 1: An implied nude, natural light portrait in the woods

Retouched (left) vs original (right)

Retouched (left) vs original (right)

Image 2: A lingerie shot, taken in a doorway to an abandoned building

Retouched (left) vs original (right)

Retouched (left) vs original (right)

Image 3: A lingerie shot taken in an abandoned building, using natural light falling through a window

Retouched (left) vs original (right)

Retouched (left) vs original (right)

I’d be interested to know what you think:

Is it enough? Too much?

Do you think the image would tell a different story with less or more retouching on the skin?

What level of skin smoothing do you prefer in your own images or in images you see by others? What would you have done differently?

Which image is your favourite?

Let’s start a respectful conversation, to fully understand why people edit images the way that they do.

I hope you’ve had a lovely weekend and that you have a productive and creative week ahead of you. Thank you for reading my blog, and I'll talk at you next Monday!

Misuzu