This is something you need to be asking a photographer before you hire them. My name is Megan Hansen and I am a social worker turned photographer and the owner of Onyx and Opal Creative Co. Listen, I don’t know that you can say that retouching is easy, right? Yes, it’s much easier than back when it was only film and things were not digital. We can do everything on our computers. However, simply editing a wedding gallery takes days. Okay? A good rule of thumb is for every hour of coverage is 2 hours at minimum of editing time. And that doesn’t include retouching. So it takes a lot of time. Second, we don’t have control of every little thing at a wedding day. Trust me, we are going to try our hardest. We are going to find the lighting that we prefer the most. We are going to do the posing, the direction, all of that and the best to our ability. But there are some circumstances that we have no control over. For example, if you have an outdoor ceremony and you already have your location selected, right? I’m not about to stop in the middle of the ceremony and say, hold up, wait, stop. We have to move a little bit to the left because this sun is just not doing it for me. Not going to happen. Right? So that’s going to look way different than your bridal portraits that I have control over every little thing for. Second, do some research on your photographer beforehand because we all have different beliefs when it comes to retouching in general. Personally, my brand value is that we don’t change body sizes, we don’t get rid of wrinkles, none of that stuff. My rule of thumb is if it would go away in two weeks on its own, then we’ll take it out. But outside of that, we believe in showing you and your beauty just as you are. So we are not doing retouching to the extent of other photographers. That’s not the only way to do it. If you prefer something different, that’s okay. But like I said, it’s important to talk with your photographer ahead of time to figure out where they stand on all of this.

Why are we wedding Pictures retouched or not? Okay, I love this one. I’m libby dollar. I have edited millions of wedding photos in the last 14 years. And this is I have a three part answer for this one. The first is what wedding photos are. Believe it or not, this is a fairly traditional industry where things change kind of slow. And the deal is that wedding photos are not just for Instagram next week. They are for ten years from now, 20 years from now, for your grandchildren to know what you look like. This is an exercise in posterity. And so the idea of photoshopping people to look like an inflated sexy alien kardashian baby, that’s a trend. Body ideals are not the same now as they were in the 90s or as they were in the they’re not going to be the same 20 years from now. We are not going to all want to look a certain way. Which brings me to my second point, which is body modifications that I’m working very hard to love every part of my body. And if I got a photo set back from a photographer and I hadn’t mentioned anything to them and they photoshopped me to look slimmer or to remove one of my chins or something like that, I would feel like, why are you telling me there’s something wrong with me? And the third reason is that the technology is just not caught up yet. When an iPhone can erase somebody from the background if it doesn’t do a very good job, or it erases half of their face, or the AI selects part of a shrubbery instead of the beach that’s actually behind them, that’s funny. And it’s one photo and it’s not a big deal on the scale of wedding with 1000 pictures. That’s not something that is going to reliably get done to every single picture. That AI does not exist yet and it is not compatible with massive raw files. And it’s not as easy for us pros because they assume if you are a professional who has control over every aspect of your photo, that you’re going to want to have control over every aspect of retouching. Which means that the thing that looks like it’s really easy to swipe and do on your phone with their tiny JPEG photos captured by their phone camera, it’s going to take an hour to do it right in photoshop a lot of the time. So that’s why it’s not practical to do it to every single photo. So yeah, if there’s some kind of automatic service that can get exit signs out of reception photos or even reliably straighten and crop things, let me know. But I am using as much of the advanced technology as I’m aware of at this point and it is not that easy. If you want me to skin smooth you on every single picture, it’s going to take ten times as long as regular editing.