High-end photo retouching is an advanced-level photo retouching technique that includes a custom, creative, and complicated retouching process. High-end retouching is mostly used in 5 types of photos: ecommerce product photos, fashion photos, beauty photos, portrait photos, and editorial photos. Professionally retouched photos attract and engage viewers, drive niche-relevant traffic, and boost conversion for brands and businesses.

Professional photo retouchers mostly use Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Luminar Neo, On1 Photo Raw, and GIMP to retouch photos. They offer image retouching solutions either as freelancers or as an agency. Freelancers are effective solutions for small projects or one time projects, whereas photo retouching agencies are a convenient solution for small to large-scale projects to ensure fast, secure, cost-effective, and high-quality image solutions.

What is High-End Photo Retouching?

High-end photo retouching is a professional and premium-level photo enhancement technique that changes an image to its best by resizing, decluttering, adjusting color and background, removing distractions, and enhancing the model’s body and facial features to meet commercial visual needs. 

High-end retouched photos create polished and realistic appearances. Professional photo retouchers bring out the best quality photos by using image retouching software Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, GIMP, DXO Photo Lab, etc.

What is the Importance of High-End Photo Retouching? 

The importance of high-end photo retouching lies in its ability to create powerful visuals that captivate viewers, enhance engagement, and drive business results. It is a complicated work and its impact expands to different sectors and professionals as follows.

Professional Photographers

High-end retouching contributes to creating quality visuals, upholds photographers’ reputation for skill and expertise, and maintains workflow. It ensures professional, polished images that photographers need to strengthen their portfolios and attract high-paying clients.

Ecommerce Businesses

High-end retouched photos play a crucial role in the ecommerce industry by providing accurate product information, enhancing visual appeal, and highlighting key benefits. This helps build brand perception and drive sales for ecommerce sellers and online store owners. Additionally, high-end retouching ensures a professional and polished look for online storefronts.

Advertising Agencies 

Advertising agencies rely on high-end retouched images to create visually stunning and impactful advertisements. They require retouching solutions for model and product photos to maintain brand consistency.

Fashion Industry 

In the fashion industry, the visual standard is a priority for luxurious fashion items such as apparel products, shoes, jewelry, and accessories. High-end retouched photos contribute to product advertising, create a sense of exclusiveness among buyers, and enhance its appeal. High-quality photos position brands in a strong position by creating refined and aesthetic photos that speak volumes of fashion brands.

What is the Difference Between Basic Photo Retouching and High-end Retouching?

The difference between basic photo retouching and high-end photo retouching is that basic image retouching includes primary edits like fixing blemishes, adjusting exposure, and minor color corrections whereas high-end retouching includes in-depth levels of retouching like skin smoothing, body reshaping, and precise color grading.

In photo retouching, the basic image retouching is the base for any retouching work. It is easy and simple to perform. It takes less time to complete. Basic retouching includes brightness and color correction, removing blemishes, fixing shadows, removing stray hair, smoothing skin, and whitening teeth and eyes.

High-end retouching is high-level detail work. It takes patience and time for flawless output. High-end retouching includes restoring old or damaged photos to changing body shape, and any custom & creative adjustment, correcting color and gamma, compositing images, changing perspective, manipulating colors, removing distractions, etc. The changes of a high-end retouched photo are obvious.

What are the Different Types of High-End Photo Retouching?

The different types of high-end photo retouching are categorized into high-end product retouching, high-end fashion retouching, high-end beauty retouching, high-end portrait retouching, and high-end editorial retouching, depending on the image purpose, publishing platforms, and target audience. 

1. High-End Product Retouching

Product retouching refers to applied retouching techniques on product photos. Product photographers, as well as editors, online sellers, and ecommerce store owners need high-end retouching to promote their products and convince potential buyers. Professionally retouched product images include color enhancement, product cleanup, background adjustment, brightness and shadow adjustment, flaws removal, and clipping path.

Best high-end product retouching software: Adobe Lightroom.

2. High-End Beauty Retouching

High-end beauty retouching is a retouching process on skin, face, hair, and eyes to enhance the model’s facial features. Photo retouchers remove spots, blemishes, and pimples and make models’ faces natural. The process also involves digital makeup, adjusting body shapes, and fixing stray hairs, and temporary marks to make the models appealing to look at so the demand for target products skyrockets. 

Best high-end beauty retouching software: Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Lightroom, Luminar Neo, and PortraitPro.

3. High-End Fashion Retouching

High-end fashion retouching refers to retouching techniques applied to clothing products, footwear products, jewelry items, other fashion accessories, and cosmetics product images. Such images show the product in pristine condition aiming to attract enthusiast fashionistas with the trend and drive sales. 
Best high-end fashion retouching software: PortraitPro, Luminar, and Adobe Lightroom.

4. High-End Portrait Retouching

High-end portrait retouching is when retouching is applied to the human face. It includes portrait retouching and headshot retouching. High-end portrait retouching involves special attention to the eyes, skin, and hair, making the images standard and professional for presentation. 

Best high-end portrait retouching software: Luminar, Adobe Lightroom, and GIMP.

5. High-End Editorial Retouching

High-end editorial retouching is the retouching type used for magazines, online and offline publications, and social media posts. Editorial retouching maintains a level of professionalism. Retouchers follow brand guidelines and implement their knowledge to drive impactful retouched images. 

Best high-end editorial retouching software: Adobe Lightroom, DXO PhotoLab, GIMP, and ON1 Photo Raw.

What is the Best Software for High-end Photo Retouching?

The best software for high-end photo retouching is the one that offers plenty of retouching features and tools, allows any type of adjustments, and meets users’ unique commercial needs. Considering all these criteria, the best software used for high-end retouching is as follows.

1. Adobe Photoshop. Adobe Photoshop is the best program for photo retouching. With plenty of retouching features such as a healing brush, clone stamp, patch tool, content-aware fill tool, dodge and burn, and liquify tool it has earned global users’ trust by creating highly refined and professional results.

2. Adobe Lightroom. Lightroom is one of the best programs for image retouching and color correction. To create high-end retouched photos, lightroom offers global and local adjustments for color and tone, red-eye correction, adjustment brushes, and graduated filters among others to create consistent looks in images.

3. Luminar  Neo. Luminar is a popular retouching software for its user-friendly interface and retouching functionalities for example AI-powered tools for automated enhancements, layer-based editing, easy-to-use sliders, erase and clone tools. While simplifying retouching tasks, Lunminar excels in creative retouched photo creation.

4. ON1 Photo Raw. On1 has been the best retouching solution because of its artificial intelligence portrait editing. Besides, its face sculpting and eye enhancement tools, local adjustments and masking options, frequency separation, and retouching brushes are effective in bringing out a professional look on retouched photos.

5. GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). GIMP, the open-source photo editing software, is best for advanced manipulation to create high-end retouched photos. Clone, healing, and perspective correction tools, layer-based editing, advanced selection and masking capabilities, scripting, and plugin support—it offers almost everything that other premium photo editing software offers.

6. DxO Photo Lab. DXO Photo Lab is a popular image retouching software, best for ISO invariant. It creates high-end professional retouched images, thanks to its plenty of features including optical corrections for lens distortions, Clearview Plus for haze removal,  noise reduction, local adjustment, and masking tools. It enhances image detail and creates high-quality pictures.

7. Portrait Pro. Portrait Pro is an effective photo retouching software to create high-end retouched photos. Its features include automatic face detection and feature recognition, Specialized tools for portrait enhancement, skin smoothing, blemish removal, face sculpting, makeup, and hair enhancement that creates picture-perfect model photos.

8. Exposure Software. Exposure Software (earlier Alien Skin Software) is best for image masking. There are plenty of powerful features it offers to create standard-grade retouched photos, such as film simulation presets for creative effects, quick masking tools, layer-based editing with blending modes, and advanced masking tools. It offers precise control of edited images.

Where to Outsource High-End Photo Retouching Service? 

There are two platforms to outsource high-end photo retouching services as follows.

Freelancing Platforms 

Freelancing platforms are a widely accessible resource to hire image retouching solutions. Freelancers with diverse skill ranges register to these platforms and serve global clients with commercially edited images. 

Pros 

• Budget-friendly option 
• Direct communication 
• Retouchers with diverse skill set 

Cons 

• Need to sign/register 
• Many people claim to be skilled 
• Not efficient for large-volume projects 
• Brand guidelines may not be followed 

Professional Agencies 

Professional agencies are a reliable choice for e-commerce brands, fashion & cosmetic brands, and commercial photographers. Retouching companies hire expert retouchers to ensure client satisfaction. Working with global clients, those retouchers are efficient in pulling out any customized solutions businesses and brands need. 

Pros 

• Easy onboarding and free trial 
• Fast turnaround, high-quality, and secure service 
• A large team of expert photo retouchers 
• Access to professional-level skills, and expertise 
• Equipped with all types of equipment and resources 
• Available to support small to large business requirements 
• Budget-friendly and bulk discount 

Cons 

• Some companies have area-based restrictions on service 

Offshore Clipping is a New York-based high-end photo retouching service provider. Since its establishment in 2010, we have been offering a wide range of photo editing and photo retouching services in a wide range of categories. Backed by a team of 250+ expert photo retouchers, we offer high-quality, fast, and secure services to international clients 24/7. Offshore Clipping has a cost-effective pricing structure to suit e-commerce sellers, solopreneurs, online marketers, and photographers’ individual needs as follows.

Delivery Time	Simple	Medium	Complex
48h	$0.48	$1.59	$3.19
24h	$0.60	$1.99	$3.99
12h	$0.84	$2.79	$5.59