Image retouching is not about changing an image meaninglessly or playfully. Or, only ‘good looking’ begets no good if it doesn’t serve the purpose. Professional’s ground never lets room to any nonsense or mind’s pleasure. I mentioned it, because I found many, specially amateurs, are biased with these.

My experiences in image industry want to say something about retouching and glamour enhancement here.
A short Prelude: Image retouching and glamour enhancement require Photoshop experts powered with deep understanding about photography and communication as well. First of all, you must investigate the given image to find out the drawbacks. Then you need to destine the changes in it; and finally work on it to serve the goal.

Story, Expression and Appeal: The first thing is to reveal the storyline that you are going to tell through the image. Your image must talk in favor of the goal. Again to say, be aware of futile beauty. It may be dumb before your viewer.

Observe the image thoroughly. Find out the ways to make it more expressive for a better story. Find out the key parts to put expression. Think about a human face. Where the key parts are? Eyes, lips and hair, bodyline. And What their expressions are? Look, smile, hair-dressing, gesture. Work on those and try to make photos good to better and better to best.

Coax up the appeal. It is a good technique to make the image stand out. Remember, the appeal should conform to the theme or it will distract the viewer. If there are approaching eyes or hands of model with a product, make sure that they are directed toward the viewer with detail, vivid look.

Retouch the dullness, wrinkles & spots: By thorough observation try to find out the dullness and spots. The better help you will get by enlarging the image. Then you can examine part by part, meticulously. Remove the spots; repair the wrinkles; but be careful with the dullness. Retouching of dullness is very intricate and involves experienced eye and arty mind. Don’t blunder here with much color and brightness. Never sponge or dodge it unnecessarily. Experienced says, – little retouch does good. So, be restrained and do better. You can streamline an image with well-designed Photoshop retouching tools. Combined and artful use of color, contrast and brightness can enhance an image amazingly.

For professional image retouching service: You must ask clients about where they are going to use the image and what do they think about changing it. It will not help you to plagiarize images or ideas from other. Consider every single project special. Think for special service for special photos. Family, official/organizational, model, product, travel – every particular kind has particular demand and approach. Try to interpret and translate them in your work for betterment.
With best care and intelligence an artist can enliven an image with another life. It will express more than its physical appearance and of course, soon you will get enthusiastic feedbacks from your clients and viewers. To be a professional, first make your eyes. Watch photos and the professional websites. They will tell you what to do with photos and what not. Try over and over again. From tradexcelgraphics.com and some other websites, I found lots of exciting photos and those inspired me to deal with photos and Photoshop.

Followings are some retouching and enhancement services that we can do with Adobe Photoshop tools:
Photo Optimization
Skin Smoothing
Red Eye Removal
Glare and Shine Removal
Clothing/Spot Touchup
Custom Cropping
Contrast Correction
Color Enhancement
Straighten Image
Brightness treatment Image
Minor Blemish Removal
Noise Removal
Edge Touch-up
Minor Wrinkle Reduction
Scar Removal
Minor Recoloring
Dark Circle Lightening (Eyes)
Teeth Whitening
Unwanted Vein Concealing/Removal
Makeup Enhancement
Hair Taming and Hair Dressing
Eye & Eyelash Enhancement
Color Cast Removal
Minor Object Removal
Selective Blurring
Lens/Focus Correction
Gesture Correction
Perspective Treatment

Commercial photo and image editing programs don’t always come cheap. Although there are many different freeware alternatives that can be used to replicate some of the features of commercial packages, many users find that they just don’t have the same clout as the big names.

GIMP’s photo editing free software package, however, is often favourably compared to Photoshop in terms of its functionality and features.

What is GIMP?
GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) was first conceived in 1995 and has seen various version releases over the years. The software is designed to allow users to edit, compose, manipulate and retouch photos and images.

As part of the GNU free software program, GIMP is free to download and to use. Users can simply use the base program if they wish or they can extend its functionality to suit specific needs via a wide range of free plug-ins.

What Does GIMP do?
The software can do just about anything in photo and image editing terms. This may, of course, depend on the plug-ins that are downloaded and used on projects. Some users will use it for simple tasks such as retouching occasional photos. Others may use it for more complex projects such as animation production and video editing. Some of the more popular features of the program include:
• Drawing/paint tools
• Video editing capabilities
• Animation tools
• Photo retouching/enhancement
• Image/photo editing and manipulation
• File format conversions
The software works via a series of different tabs or windows which can hidden or shown as the user wishes. This can be especially useful when working on more complex projects. Initially available for Unix users GIMP can now be downloaded on to various platforms, including:
• Microsoft Windows
• Mac OS X
• Sun OpenSolaris
• FreeBSD
It can, of course, still be run on GNU/Linux operating systems as well.

The Advantages of Using GIMP
One of the main advantages to using GIMP is that it can be as simple or as complex as its user wishes. The program is easy to learn how to use yet offers the kinds of features and functions that tend to be otherwise reserved for commercial products. Unlike many other freeware photo/image editing packages this solution probably comes closest in terms of matching overall functionality to the commercial market leaders.

Cost is also a primary factor for many users trying out this kind of package for the first time. The fact that GIMP allows a user to access advanced kinds of photo/image creation, editing and manipulation tools completely free of charge may make it worth a look. Given the high costs of commercial software packages in this sector, many will try out GIMP as an alternative first so this may be worth doing.