Photographer
Photographers often touch up their photos to improve the look of a photo. For example, a photographer or touch up expert might remove blemishes, remove unwanted objects in the photo, alter body parts, move the location of facial features, and/or change the colors. Touched up pictures can also be known as "photoshopped," as Adobe Photoshop is often the software program used to create touch ups.
Instructions
1. Determine where the lighting is coming from. Lighting can only come from one direction. If a picture has been touched up by combining other photos together you can spot this from the lighting. Look at one person in the picture and figure out where the light is coming from. Look at the next person in the photo. If the direction that the light is coming from is different for one or more people, the photo is most likely touched up.
2. Look at the skin of the model in the picture. Often you will be able to tell that the skin is far too smooth to be real. Sometimes you can even spot the differences between untouched up skin and touched up skin on the same photo. Photographers want to do as little touching up as possible so it is less noticeable. You might see that the model has blemishes on one cheek but not the other. If the skin looks too smooth it has probably been touched up.
3. See if the picture is too symmetrical. Sometimes a photographer will move the eyes to make them more symmetrical. If one eye is more open than the other, the one the photographer likes better can be selected, copied, pasted and reversed. Then it is placed where the other eye was. After that, the model will have perfectly symmetrical eyes.
4. Spot cloning in a picture. If something is removed from a photo the photographer will touch up that area by cloning whatever image is already there. For example, if there is a photo of two people biking on a trail with trees behind them and one person is removed, the photographer will copy a tree and paste it as many times as necessary to cover up where the other person was. This is known as cloning.
5. Look for odd brightness. Pictures really aren't all that bright. If the colors in the photo appear too bright then it has probably been touched up. A photographer can brighten up anything: hair color, clothing color, jewelry color, lighting and eye color.
6. Look for an absurd amount of hair on the model. In a picture, a photographer can add hair by using the cloning method. If a model looks like she has more hair than is naturally possible, the picture has probably been touched up.
