Do Photographers Retouch Photos? Here’s What’s Included in Your Session

Many clients ask whether photographers retouch photos or use Photoshop. The answer is yes — but not always in the way people expect. This guide explains what editing is included in my photography sessions, when additional retouching may be added, and why professional photography should still look natural and true to you. These retouching guidelines apply to my photography sessions throughout the Tampa Bay area, including St. Petersburg, Clearwater, and the surrounding Gulf beaches.

Many clients ask whether photographers retouch photos. This guide explains what editing is included in my sessions, when additional retouching is available, and why professional photos should look natural rather than heavily filtered.

One of the most common questions that is rarely ever asked — but probably should be — is about retouching: what’s included, what isn’t, and why.

Every type of session is a little different, so I wanted to explain my approach and the reasoning behind it.

My Philosophy on Editing

All of the images I deliver are professionally edited for color, exposure, contrast, and overall tone. This is standard across all of my sessions.

“Retouching” is different. Retouching involves detailed work like removing wrinkles, dark or red spots, smoothing skin, or fixing hair. That level of editing takes significantly more time per image.

Because I deliver large galleries with unlimited downloads (without requiring a print package), it simply isn’t realistic to fully retouch every photo. Instead, I focus on delivering a high-quality edited gallery, and retouching can be added when needed.

A Note About Beauty Filters – Skin Retouching

A lot of apps and phone cameras now offer “beauty filters.” These filters usually work by blurring the image, which reduces the detail and quality of a professional photograph.

Because of that, I don’t use beauty filters on my images. I prefer professional retouching that maintains the sharpness and detail of the original photo.

If someone wants additional retouching — such as removing wrinkles, fine lines, or blemishes — that can absolutely be done. I am increasingly using a professional retouching service RetouchUp that costs about $2.50 per image, which many photographers (and even individuals) use. One nice thing about this process is that it also balances highlights and shadows. I’ll often fine-tune those images further afterward as well. We have Portrait Pro but I find it too fake and doll looking – plus it is a blurring filter.

Let’s do the math if I was to retouch every image. Say I spend 5 minutes on the photo before it goes to retouching. Then I spend 15 minutes retouching. That’s a total of 20 minutes. Let’s say I create 100 images for each session and have 100 sessions per year (both are more).

20 minutes x 100 photos = 2,000 minutes x 100 sessions = 200,000 minutes / 60 minutes in an hour = 3,333 hours / 56 weeks in a year = 59 hours a week editing.

As you can see its just not possible to offer fully edited galleries with every image retouched.

“Can You Make Me Look Skinnier?”

Almost every session includes at least one joke about this.

Someone will say something like, “You can fix that in Photoshop, right?” or “Just make me look skinnier.”

I always laugh because I understand where the comment is coming from. Most people feel a little nervous being photographed, and it’s completely normal to worry about how you’ll look in pictures.

The reality is that photography works best when the goal is to capture a great version of the real you, not a completely altered version of you.

Professional retouching can absolutely help with things like temporary blemishes, lighting balance, or small distractions. But dramatically reshaping someone’s body or making them look significantly thinner is not something I do. That kind of editing almost always looks unnatural, and it takes away from the authenticity of the photo.

I do, however, occasionally make very subtle adjustments to fix minor distractions using liquify — for example, smoothing a small area that looks odd due to posture, wind, or a momentary pose — but these are small, almost invisible corrections that my clients don’t know about. Body slimming in Photoshop is not included and generally not offered.

Instead of relying on Photoshop to change someone’s appearance, I focus on the things that truly make a difference in how you look in photos:

flattering angles
good lighting
natural posing
helping people relax in front of the camera

These things make a much bigger impact than extreme editing ever could.

My goal is always for you to look at your photos and think, “That’s me — and I look great.”

Headshots

Most of the time, retouching is included with headshots. However, this can depend on the scale of the session.

For example, I recently photographed a corporate headshot session where we created 800 images of one person in about four hours. In situations like that, full retouching for every image simply isn’t practical.

Instead, clients typically select the number of images included in their package for retouching, then we send out to RetouchUp, then we take another look, make a few small adjustments — delivered.

👉 Check out more Headshots

Beach Family Sessions

For beach sessions, I do include removal of distracting people or objects on the beach, but that is done at my discretion based on what I consider distracting in the image.

What I do not include with beach sessions is hair or skin retouching.

The beach almost always comes with wind — sometimes a lot of wind. I recently photographed a wedding on Redington Beach in 30 mph winds. Wind creates what photographers call a “hair halo,” where small hairs blow around the head.

Because beach sessions produce large galleries, I can’t realistically retouch every strand of hair or every skin detail across all the images. If I did, sessions would take far longer to deliver and prices would need to increase significantly.

👉 Check out more Beach Sessions

Large Family Groups

Large family groups almost always involve face swapping.

As a fairly traditional photographer, I prefer photos where everyone is smiling and looking at the camera. Some photographers work in a more documentary style, where parents may be turned toward their children trying to get them to look at the photographer.

Instead, I take multiple photos of the group in the same position so that I can swap faces if needed. This allows me to combine the best expressions from several images into one final photo where everyone looks their best.

Family and Couple Sessions

Like beach sessions, family and couple sessions typically include a fully edited gallery, but not full retouching on every image.

If there are specific photos you love and want additional retouching on, that can absolutely be added for an additional fee.

Events

Event photography does not include retouching. That is part of why event photography services cost less. During events, I am primarily documenting what is happening in real time — capturing moments as they unfold — rather than carefully creating every single image through posing, composition, location choices, and directing people the way I do during portrait sessions.

In other words, event photography is much more about documenting the moment than building each photograph from the ground up.

However, if there’s a small fix that can easily be done for my excellent repeat clients, I’m happy to help when possible.

For example, I once photographed an event where a board member’s husband blinked in a photo she really wanted. Because I had a nearly identical frame from a moment before, I was able to take his eyes from that image and composite them into the final photo so they appeared open.

This doesn’t always work, but when it does, it’s a great solution.

👉 Learn more about Events

Print Orders

Print orders over $100 always receive additional attention and retouching.

When a print order is made, I go back into the selected image and complete additional retouching and adjustments before the final print is produced. This helps ensure the image looks its best when printed, since prints show detail differently than images viewed on a screen.

Work You Don’t Always See

There is also a lot of work that happens behind the scenes that clients may not always realize.

Over the years, I have often gone beyond my normal editing standards for many galleries. That meant fixing things like acne, softening a hair halo caused by beach wind, adjusting teeth, or making small body adjustments such as slimming an arm or pushing a double chin on – Every – Single – Photo.

My clients from previous years received this kind of additional work without even realizing it.

However, detailed retouching takes significant time per image, and as galleries have grown larger and turnaround expectations have become faster, and my business has grown, I’ve had to be more consistent about what is included in standard editing and what counts as additional retouching.

I still remove objects and people. They drive me crazy and I don’t like any distractions. Again, my clients don’t know what their photos looked like before.

Turnaround Time and Editing Volume

Most of my sessions produce large galleries with many images, and clients understandably want their photos quickly.

In order to keep turnaround times reasonable and pricing fair, I focus on delivering beautifully edited images first, while offering additional retouching when it’s requested.

I guarantee galleries within 3 weeks, except during the month of December or unless another timeline is discussed in advance. Even during December — my busiest time of year — I am often still able to deliver galleries within that same three-week window, and frequently sooner.

Small weddings or elopements (1–2 hours of coverage) are also delivered within about three weeks, while full wedding days (6–8 hours of coverage) are typically delivered within six weeks due to the much larger number of images involved.

For proposals, I always include sneak peek images because of the celebratory nature of the session. Couples are usually excited to share their engagement right away, so I make sure they have a few images quickly.

Occasionally, clients also request early images for specific needs, such as graduation portraits needed immediately for a yearbook deadline or event photos for social media coverage. When possible, these requests can be arranged in advance.

If you receive your gallery within one day, a few days, or even one week, that means your gallery was moved ahead in the editing queue and you are receiving very fast service.

Like most small businesses, I always appreciate a quick thank you, a five-star Google review, or a tip if you feel the service exceeded expectations.

This approach also allows clients to decide which images they truly care about having detailed retouching on, rather than spending hours retouching images that may never be used.