I’m a little surprised to be saying this myself, because retouching is my vocation, but there is a balance that needs to be struck. If you suspect you’ll be spending more than twelve hours wrestling with an image, it’s probably a good idea to look into using a different piece of stock, or better still, commission original photography. Sometimes having a photographer start from scratch is more prudent than trying to force two dissimilar stock images onto one image plane. There are bound to be exceptions to this, and I suppose there are some client requests where “no” is not an acceptable answer. But sometimes modifying less than appropriate stock is more of a chore than paying a photographer to replicate a specific idea. Photographers are much less expensive to hire nowadays, and the resulting photos can have broader use. Since you own the image under these circumstances, you don’t need to pay for additional placements. Since you’ve commissioned the shots, you can contemplate your subject from multiple angles and at higher resolutions. You can even get that precious commodity of print production we call “bleed”.
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Retouching is a great way to amplify your subject. You can create surrealistic images that have great stopping power. If you start with good photography, all of it from the same shoot, you will likely create something that looks more cohesive. If you begin with ill-fitting stock, you’ll spend hours moving pixels around, and the resulting image looks overworked and underpaid. This is why some stock concepts should be declared, “Dead On Arrival”.
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