What are wedding photography touch-ups?

To explain what wedding photography touch-ups on photos actually are, it’s important to know the difference between touch-ups and what you might call ‘standard editing’.

Almost every professional wedding photographer shoots in raw format, which simply means the photos are captured in the most flexible and dynamic digital file format for post production changes such as colour and exposure. Raw files contain more information than JPEG files making them more pliable and dynamic.

For example, during the reception your photographer will likely use flash to add light to various scenes. It is almost impossible to capture every flash photo at exactly the right exposure. Often photos are slightly over or under exposed. If the photographer was not shooting in raw format, there would be less latitude or scope to change the exposure afterwards.

But raw photos are just that, they are raw and require ‘cooking’ or editing which normally consists of a two stage process. Almost always your wedding photographer will apply a ‘standard recipe’ to the raw format which makes adjustments to colour and exposure otherwise known as a preset. For example, the highlights (super bright spots) are reduced, and the shadows (mid tones) are raised to expose more of the background.

This first stage of editing (otherwise known as a basic edit) is essentially automated when the photos are initially imported, or the photographer's standard recipe (aka preset) can also be applied once photos have been culled (the best ones selected).

This is all done within the Adobe Lightroom Classic software (Windows or Mac) for the vast majority of photographers.

Your photographer will then make minor adjustments to the initial recipe. How many adjustments that are made to each photo will depend to a large extent on the skill of the photographer in terms of the settings they used and how they captured the photo. For example, if the photographer underexposed every photo, they would have to raise the exposure on every single photo individually (by moving the slider in Adobe Lightroom).

If the photographer was not holding the camera level, they may have to make level adjustments etc.

There are over 40 sliders, tools and settings within Adobe Lightroom to edit each photo. It is entirely possible for your photographer to spend 10 minutes just editing one photo. This is especially true if it’s an epic portrait photo, where more time may be spent editing these photos.

Adobe Lightroom Standard Editing Options

However, most photos (such as the ceremony photos) will be edited within 30 seconds to 1 minute in Adobe Lightroom. If the photographer got ‘everything right in the camera’ (which is rare) then they may not have to adjust any sliders in Lightroom.

This process detailed above is essentially what editing photos consists of. It is applying a standard recipe (and colour profile) and then making further tweaks and edits to suit each photo.

But what about photo touch ups? How do these differ from editing?

Well, photo touch-ups always occur after the photo has been edited and are largely focused on the face and skin of the subjects (which in this case are normally always the bride and groom).

But wait there’s more… Photo touch ups can be done in two ways. They can be done from within Adobe Lightroom using the brushes and spot removal tools, or they can be individually exported to Adobe Photoshop for even more advanced touch ups.

Having said that, most wedding photos are not touched up to an advanced level in Adobe Photoshop. There just isn’t the time to do that and it is quite frankly, unnecessary.

So Adobe Photoshop is largely used by professional photo retouchers in the commercial space, such as fashion photography. Indeed it is possible to become so skilled at retouching photos in Photoshop that this is someone’s entire job.

When wedding photographers talk about ‘photo retouching’ though they are most likely referring to touching up these photos in Adobe Lightroom, after editing has taken place.

Photo touch-ups can include improvements and enhancements such as (very commonly) spot or blemish removal, acne pitting, scarring or other scar removal, stray hair removal, eye enhancement (such as clarity, exposure and saturation) and teeth whitening (desaturation and exposure increase). Skin softening can also be achieved in Adobe Lightroom via brushes which reduce clarity and contrast and increase noise reduction,

As you can imagine many of these photo touch up adjustments are subjective. Whether you think that extra tiny blemish is worth removing, or if too much or too little skin softening has been applied.

Touch ups in Lightroom are still labour intensive though (even if not exporting to Adobe Photoshop). It is entirely a manual process to spot remove acne for example, and can take 5-10 minutes per photo once all required adjustments have been made.

For this reason, for a wedding gallery of say 500 photos, it would be unfeasible to touch up every single photo. That’s why I offer my wedding photography clients the option (depending on the package chosen) to select some photos for retouching if required. These photos may be those they intend to print large artworks from, and are also normally close-up photos where skin blemishes or spot are clearly visible.

So the difference between editing and touch-ups is that every photo will be ‘edited’ but only selected photos will be touched up, and only if these changes are actually needed and requested (at least in my case). There is no point whitening the Brides teeth for example, if they are already perfect ;)

When comparing wedding photographers, an excellent question to ask if ‘How many photos will be edited?’ but also ‘How many photos will be touched up?’ (if any).