Hair Retouching

Why Hair Retouching Falls Apart at the Edges (And How to Fix It Without Losing Texture)
Hair Retouching

Why Hair Retouching Falls Apart at the Edges (And How to Fix It Without Losing Texture)

A few years back, I delivered a set of headshots to a corporate client and got a reply that stopped me cold. She loved everything except the hair. “It looks like a helmet,” she wrote. I stared at my screen, sipped my tea, and opened the file again. She was right. I had clone-stamped the frizz into submission so aggressively that her curls looked like a vinyl wig. The texture was gone.

Why Hair Retouching Breaks Most Retouchers (And the Workflow That Finally Fixed It for Me)
Hair Retouching

Why Hair Retouching Breaks Most Retouchers (And the Workflow That Finally Fixed It for Me)

The first time a client told me my retouching looked “plastic,” I was mortified. I had spent three hours on a beauty shot, smoothing skin, evening out tone, cleaning up the background. The image looked pristine. It also looked completely fake. What I hadn’t touched was the hair, and in hindsight, that’s exactly why everything else fell apart. Hair that hasn’t been thoughtfully edited reads as an afterthought next to an over-processed face.