How much retouching is allowed?

[Mshake]

Normally I try to restore the photo as close to the original as possible. Recently I did a wedding photo that was in Tess's gallery and I removed a couple distracting elements that I felt improved the photo esthetically. Both of these were in shadow areas. I even repaired rusty damage on the door in the photo. In this case, Tess was ok with it.

On another photo in the background and off to the side was a houseplant in a pot. Rather than try to restore that I found an image of the same plant in a pot and placed it in the photo. I made the color and exposure match the original as close as possible.

On clothing, I've replaced some pants with a similar looking pair.

Is it ok to do this? Keep in mind I only do it when the original has very limited good areas to clone from.

Thanks
Mike

[Mhayes]

Mshake, we try to restore rather than retouch, although a fine distinction. If you ask your distributor first and she approves, then go ahead. However, we are not here to make changes when we know that wasn't how it was in the original. Long, long time ago we had a volunteer that decided that she would put finger polish on a lot of the women's hands. Yes, that is over the top and funny, but try to stick close to the original. As to switching out with an image that is the same, do you mean from within the family's album, or do you mean going out on the Web and fining a replacement?

Going out and finding a replacement is most likely to be noticeable and I do not recommend it. Plus, if you take it from a copy righted photo, that is a no-no. It would be best if you post your photo on the Forum and go from there--that way we can see what you are describing.

Margie

[Mshake]

Thanks Margie, that helps. I always do try to keep it original if I can. I haven't had any do-overs yet from the distributors so I think I'm doing ok.