Editing and post production has always been part of photography. The early glamourous, portraits of 30’s, 40’s and 50’s movie stars were just as highly edited as today.
Today in the modern digital age, we use tools like Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop, back then they used to employ specialist retouchers, these skilled artists would draw on the actual negatives, often large format negatives 5 x 4 inches. Skilled use of a scalpel would remove any spots and blemishes. Once printed, then careful use of a paint brush and paint would finish up the touching up before the final prints went out.
I use Adobe Lightroom for all my images to process and manage my images, and I occasionally take some of them into Photoshop.
Charlotte is a wonderful model who needs very little post production, but a little skin softening in Photoshop plus a vignette and tint in Lightroom finishes the image off nicely.
I’ll have to write some posts about workflow and editing. Its not as hard as you think but does require the right tools and some patience.