Today is Wednesday and you already know that it’s time for part two of our interview with a retoucher.

Virginia Y
What about the retouching trends? What do you think about them? Hmm. Can we say that there are retouching trends?

Luca Szalmas
I do think there are retouching trends. They fluctuate between natural and overdone. And it’s a cycle that keeps repeating In my opinion, throughout a couple of years. Now, I think natural is really in, I really enjoy fresh looking skin. And I like it when I can tell whether pictures refreshed or not. Obviously, it probably is. But I like not being able to tell that, Oh, that’s a problematic area, the researcher could have done that better. I like to be able to look at an image and see Wow, this is perfect. And it wasn’t touched. I like to believe it wasn’t touched.

Virginia Y
Do you think that we actually need to retouch a lot of a photo in order to make it look like it’s natural?

Luca Szalmas
It depends. You can really have a black and white answer for all the images. But I think that a lot of what I see could have done with less or even no retouching, and I’m talking against myself, because that’s literally my job. But I prefer not over retouching, because it doesn’t look good. I don’t like it when something is super, super British because we’re trying to follow like the picture doesn’t benefit. More doesn’t mean better?

Virginia Y
Absolutely. Do you usually do the whole post production along with the print prep?

Luca Szalmas
I usually don’t do the print prep, I just do the post production, because I mostly work for web. But when I work for print, I usually handed to the magazines to work on it because well, I not connected to the magazines, usually. But the photographers usually preferred that for some reason, at least who I work with.

Virginia Y
Here are some questions from our audience!
How far do you think we can go when we’re reaching older people? 

Luca Szalmas
Wow, that’s a good question. I rarely reach much older people. But I think the basic retouching steps still apply to them, I would get rid of anything that is not permanently on the face blemishes or pimples or whatever. Or if they have anything that they would prefer to be removed, for example, a very specific wrinkle or a scar or something, I would do that. But other than that, I would be very, very careful with dodging and burning. And if I have the decision over, I would keep pretty much all wrinkles. Perfect.

Virginia Y
And another one, this one is just so short, but exactly where it should be. So where do you think we can go wrong with retouching?  

Luca Szalmas
Most people can go wrong when they don’t zoom out.

Virginia Y
That’s a good one.

Luca Szalmas
I didn’t want to pinpoint any specific area on the face. I think this problem can be solved by zooming out really far if somebody prefers that, but zoom out as much as your eyes feel comfortable. And I don’t even know how to say it, if you know that it’s going to be seen on mobile, zoom out until the image becomes that form size. I feel like the phone is way more prominent in terms of where we see the images. But if it’s going to be used for a billboard, obviously, you still need to zoom out because people will see it from afar to just from closer. But I feel like that might give you a bit of a leeway. You can zoom in a little because also it’s going to be huge, you won’t see all the details, because when they blow up an image, if you go close, you see these blobs of color. But still, it’s from a specific distance, it will be visible if there are mistakes. But I think most people don’t really touch for billboards. So the best you can do zoom out and don’t try to retouch everything. It’s sometimes I find myself doing this, I’m super guilty of it. I love to zoom in. Well, I’m selfish such a hypocrite, but I love to zoom in. But I also know when to stop. So I like to zoom in. And I like to clean up everything. And sometimes I need to stop myself because although I didn’t do anything in dodging and burning, the skin already looks soft. So it’s not just the dodging and burning thing, you don’t need to zoom in to get rid of every single pitch false or everything on the face. You know, you can do most of the retouching with dodging and burning. And sometimes, when I’m not really seeing what I’m going to be doing, I like to dungeon burn first, which sounds a little weird, and I don’t, I don’t do the whole thing. First, just some rough outlines, and some very, very obviously, that areas that I’m going to be touching and burning any way. But when I do that the skin looks pretty good. I just go back to clean up a couple of things. First of all, sometimes it’s way, way faster. And I get a much more natural result. People really like to hold themselves to these strict workflows. But it doesn’t always have to be the same because every image is so different. That if you just deviate from your original workflow, to adjust your vision to the image, that can be very, very beneficial. Because with this dodging and burning things, I only do it when I have really really rough luminosity issues. Sometimes I think, oh, that is texture. And I try to heal it and clone it. And that’s a mistake, because that thing can be solved with dodging and burning way better. But I meticulously follow the cleanup dungeon burn color workflow, you tend to forget about it that, hey, I’m going to have a dodging and burning step. And this can be fixed with that. So that’s why I like to morph my workflow. Because when you’re flexible, you can get so much better results. And that’s a really important thing to learn as a beginner retoucher. I wish somebody told me because I tended to follow what everyone said on the internet. And that was good for a while. But then I realized that, look, this is not necessarily sustainable. If I want to stay sane.

Virginia Y
I think this is actually a great advice. Even if you’re not a retoucher it can apply to everyone in the industry and probably everyone in life.

Luca Szalmas
Well, I hope so. Yeah.

Virginia Y
We actually have lots of questions from the audience today. So another one is, if you can tell us a little bit more about handling skin color. Anything, this is a very deep question, we can go into many details over here.

Luca Szalmas
Yes, we can. When I discovered Capture One, I was blown away. And I think that made my skin color correction a million times better. Because Capture One handles skin tones. Amazingly, I like to start my workflow with correcting skin tones, while I’m doing the right process, because I can do the same thing in Photoshop. But I feel like Capture One does it so effortlessly and quickly that I don’t feel like doing it in Photoshop manually and spending a lot of time on it. I tend to do that. And I tried to stay true to the person’s skin color. But I tried to make it as even as possible. If somebody has a very yellow toned body, but their face has a lot of red in it, I will probably try to make the whole skins color code, sir to the body. But I don’t want to make it to yellow because if I deviate a lot from the faces original color, it will look weird. So I try to find a middle ground. And when I go to Photoshop, I usually just do this basic color. And when I do the Photoshop corrections, it’s all local and very targeted. And then I do the color grading. So my skin tone process is in Capture One so that when I’m going to Photoshop, I already have a very, very good base to work on. Because I feel like if I do the skin first, I won’t need to go back because it’s one of those things like, no one’s going to tell me Oh, could you please take a little bit back from that good color on her face. I tried to neutralize my images in raw processing. And the skin color is a main aspect of the raw processing. So I don’t have to deal with that in Photoshop. But I still do some small things because I don’t flatten the color and the hue and so that I have lively colors.

Virginia Y
I really like that right now we are talking about colors, because the next question from the audience is about black and white retouching. And if we have to do something different compared to the moments when we retouching in color,

Luca Szalmas
I didn’t do many black and white photos, but it doesn’t burn with visual aid anyway, which is black and white. So I just treat the whole retouching process. Like I’m retouching with a visual aid. I don’t think this much in terms of the workflow. I treated the same. But it might not be the same for somebody. I don’t know.

Virginia Y
There is another question. We actually have lots of questions today from the audience. And the question is, that’s the brand of the camera makes a really big difference for you. I think it’s interesting one,

Luca Szalmas
honestly, the brand of the camera doesn’t make me go Yay, it’s a Canon shot. Although I do prefer canon, I must say, but it’s only because I work mostly on canon shots for some reason. And why it’s something else. I’m just a little surprised. But other than that, I don’t feel like there’s much difference, because the algorithms and the post processing has so many options that it does matter what you put in, but you can get so much out of all that information that already exists so that the camera is only important because of the lens for me. And also I like it when it’s not super noisy, which not all cameras can handle well. But yeah, that’s that’s it no brand preference for me.

Virginia Y
I thought that you say something different because as a photographer, I can tell that, for example, the camera shots are a little bit more reddish, and the Nikon shots but they are a little bit more green and blue. If we talk about higher brands, the color is completely different, especially the skin color if we talk for example, about Hasselblad so really thought that your answer is going to differ a little. But this is also very interesting for me. So let’s go to another question that I find very interesting in super important and above very touching. And the question is, do we need to know anatomy? We do, right?

Luca Szalmas
If you don’t, I’m sorry. But you’re not a good retoucher.

Virginia Y
But you can learn don’t worry.

Luca Szalmas
Absolutely learn is nothing lost. Learn it. I know it’s weird to say I don’t like to say such things. But anatomy is, is crucial. It’s so weird. When people put highlights and shadows where there is nothing, then it really throws the eye off. You can tell that Oh, wow. This doesn’t look good. I don’t know why. Yeah. It also depends on who sees the image, because of the models sees herself. It’s weird, because they might not recognize themselves to say way. Or they can tell that Wow, that was not great. And they really messed up this part. But obviously, you’re probably not the model. So let’s talk about the audience. Yeah, it’s the same for other people we recognize faces. And we can recognize when there’s something off about a face. And in real life and also in digital images is there’s not much difference, I reckon, try to respect ratios and respect the way the face receives light, and create shadows and highlights and try to be methods that are very focused on luminosity, specifically thinking of luminosity mask, for example, I noticed sometimes that people like to apply a highlighter, for example, with dodging and burning, they start dodging and burning around the highlight area. But they tend to move a little sometimes. And that little movement can lift the face or make drooping or just look super natural. But if you like to enhance highlight, I would suggest you use the mausoleum asks, because it already has the information, the luminosity information, and it will only target the areas where there is something and you can really, really target the curves. And you don’t have to manually choose where to place those highlights and shadows. So you just keep the original anatomy of the face.

Virginia Y
Whoo, guys, you just received a free advice from real pro. So write it down right away.
Okay, we have one last question from the audience today. Guys, if you want to be an active part of our podcast, just follow our Instagram account. It’s photography underscore podcast on Instagram, you can find us there, you can ask us questions, you can send us themes and these questions, we are going to forward to our amazing guests. Yhe last question for you, I think is going to be super easy for you to answer is, what do you think is a good returning period or editorial retouch?

Luca Szalmas
Well, that depends on what the photographer and their team meets. In my opinion, I don’t think it should depend on the retoucher. I think they have a deadline to hit and I will work around that. So I think that is my answer. I really don’t know how.

Virginia Y
So what if it’s a collaboration, and it’s just a starting photographer and a starting retoucher? They both have no idea what is supposed to be the returning time. So what would you suggest them to say?

Luca Szalmas
Well, first of all, communicate because you need to communicate period. Yeah. You need to know what the other person can do. And how fast can that be done? And how fast can it be done? Well, if you’re a beginner retoucher, and you have no idea how long this will take, don’t worry, first of all, don’t promise anything, if you don’t know, just discuss the specific timeframe. And check in with the photographer, specific timeframe for when you check in because he might have other stuff to do. But make sure to check in and send updates, and let the photographer see what you’re working on. And if they don’t like something, they can point at it and say, do this thing differently and the rest of the series. And yeah, you work out how long it takes, it takes a lot of practice to know how fast you can do certain things just by looking at an image. So when you starting out, just practice and time yourself, I always tell myself, no matter what I do, no matter if it’s collaboration, for a paid job, I always tie myself. So I know, on average, how long it takes to research a specific kind of picture just by looking at it because I have references from previous jobs. And you will know after a while.

Virginia Y
Well, this is actually very interesting that you said that your timing yourself, do you think that researchers supposed to court on the time they spend on the photo or just preferred?

Luca Szalmas
It’s a really good touchy subject, I prefer quoting on time. But it’s also true that just because you can do something fast, it doesn’t mean it should be cheaper, because they also pay for your expertise, not just the time you spend on it. Because if you’re great, you’re probably make it faster. So I don’t know, I really think it should be a personal question for every retoucher. Somebody I know likes to quote, per picture. I personally don’t like to do that. Because I don’t have the clients yet where I can say, okay, it’s going to be this much per image. And I know I will be satisfied in the end. Because if I can say it will be X amount of money per image. And I know that I can not only complete that, in that timeframe, but also profit on it. I don’t mind to say that, yes, it’s going to be this much for the whole series. I prefer to say, okay, it’s going to be in this ballpark.

Virginia Y
And I can kind of tell but​not per image, I’m not there yet. Do you have a specific program maybe that you’re using for yourself, or maybe just to clock?

Luca Szalmas
Know, the clock wouldn’t be very efficient for me, because I will always forget, I have toggle. I don’t remember how much I pay for it. I paid for it annually. But I think it’s about $10 a month. If anybody’s interested. You can have projects in different tasks, different clients, and I really like it.

Virginia Y
That sounds awesome. We’re even going to put a link in the show notes to it, so you know where to find it. And when we’re on the topic of time, what is the printer that took you the longest time to retouch?

Luca Szalmas
I used to do a lot of e commerce. Sometimes I had to recharge thousands of images. And those take a long time. I think the longest one probably took me a month Wow. Which was absolutely soul crushing. And I don’t like to do ecommerce anymore, because they are repetitive, boring, and nothing creative comes out of it. And they take the longest time.

Virginia Y
And what about the shortest period of time?

Luca Szalmas
Two hours. Sometimes I have one of images, which I don’t really like. But those are quick. But when it comes to editorials when it’s five, six images, it’s possible to turn that around within a couple of hours. There’s not a lot of retouching involved.

Virginia Y
What is the next big thing, the next amazing project that you’re super excited about? Where if there is not a particular one? What is the project that you would be super excited about? ​

Luca Szalmas
The projects I’m most excited about? I can’t talk about because I’m under NDA, which is so unfortunate that I have a lot of really good editorials coming up that I’m proud of, I know I will have even more. So I’m just waiting for those to come out because I have a lot of great new clients who shoot amazing stuff. So I’m waiting for those to show off.

Virginia Y
Sounds great. And we cannot wait to see them. So guys, You know where to follow her. You know where to go and take a look at her work. in the show notes on photography podcast on net, you’ll be able to see her website and there’s a link to her Instagram account. And I want to say thank you very much for this conversation. It was so nice to talk to you.

Luca Szalmas
Thank you.

Virginia Y
That was it guys par number two is over. And this was the end of our interview with look at you can check out her Instagram account and all of her links on photography podcast.net. Just as usual, we’ll keep you updated with all of the news around her. And you can see those updates on our Facebook group called the fashion photography podcast. How expected right? Thank you guys so much for being with me today. And don’t forget to come back again on Friday because it’s going to be time for the Friday episode with me, Virginia. Thank you guys again and I cannot wait to see on Friday.