Definition Of Retouching

Retouching is the process by which a good, bad, or indifferent photograph is converted into a bad drawing or painting.

Working Up In Mono-Chrome, Oils, Etc

Theoretically, retouching may be considered admissible, that is if the impression can be made more true by it. There are, perhaps, half a dozen painters in the world who could do this, but no one else. Nature is far too subtle to be meddled with in this manner. We have discussed the question with many artists, and their verdict is the same as ours. It is the common plea of photographers that photography exaggerates the shadows, but we think it has been shown that if photography is properly practised, no such exaggeration of shadows takes place, and if it did, retouching would only add to the falsity in another way. This retouching and painting over a photograph by incapable hands, by whom it. is always done, is much to be deprecated. The result is but a hybrid, and is intolerable to any artist. One fatal fact in all painted photographs, and one which for ever keeps them without the realm of art, is that the shadows, being photographic, are black and not filled with reflected colour as in nature and as in good oil painting. The same remark applies to mechanically-coloured photographs. Such abominations, from an art point of view may, however, be useful in the trades, for pattern plates and such things. Consider for a moment the habit of working up in crayon, monochrome, water-colour and oils. What does it mean? and how is it done? In some establishments the practice is for a clerk to note down certain of the sitter's characteristics, such as "hair light, eyes blue, necktie black;" these remarks are sent with a photograph, generally an enlargement, to the artist! He, in a conventional and crude manner, makes necessarily a travesty of the portrait, and for these abominations the customer pays from 5,'. to 20Z. Consider the utter sham and childishness of the whole proceeding, and remember that a portrait painter of the greatest ability can only paint with the model actually before him, yet these workers-up, who are not artists at all, can paint from memoranda made by a clerk. It is astonishing to think there are people in the world foolish enough to pay for such trash. Even the very best oil painting done in such a way is but trash, and if the photographic base is so destroyed or covered over that none of it shows, it must then be judged on the grounds of monochrome drawing or painting as the case may be, and a sad thing it is when judged on these grounds. It may be said, "But painters paint posthumous portraits." Yes, they do, confiding public, but they paint them as sculptors model posthumous busts, but they do not call them works of art. We know several artists who are compelled by necessity and the vanity of human nature to execute these posthumous portraits, and we know, too, how they value such work. But it must not be forgotten what a gulf separates able artists from the third-rate "workers-up" for photographers. Moreover, true artists never attempt posthumous portraits on the top of a photograph, but simply use the photograph as a guide for modelling, light and shade, etc, a quite legitimate use, both for painter and sculptor. The Photographic Society of Great Britain is to be congratulated ou the stand it has made in the matter by not hanging any of these abominations on their walls, and it is to be hoped they will stand firm and never admit coloured photographs of any kind until the great problem of photography in natural colours be solved.

Posthumous portraits and busts.

Phot. Soc.

Great

Britain.

"High Art" photographers.

Origin Of Retouching

We have amongst photographers to-day persons who pride themselves on their skill in taking out of a photograph double chins, wrinkles, freckles, and all the character of a face, and who call themselves, we believe, "high art photographers," mere flatterers of mankind's weaknesses are they, not even honest craftsmen. And not only do they thus mutilate portraits, but with their Chinese white and Indian ink will they, with all the confidence of the uneducated, touch up a landscape or a face with no model before them. Of tonality of course they never heard, and Nature they never knew. It was once our lot to judge the pictures at a Cambridge photographic exhibition, and we were not a little staggered by the audacity with which one noted "London firm" had touched up and worked upon an opal enlargement of Niagara Falls. The picture was very true and beautiful before those vandals had got hold of it, but, great Ceesar! what a sight it was afterwards, with its impasto of Chinese white, and its shiny gum polished, India ink deepened shadows! In short, a more meretricious production it has seldom been our lot to inspect, and this thing was exhibited by an University undergraduate! If such is the taste of an educated man, what can one expect from the rest of the world! Let, then, the student avoid all these meretricious productions as he would all vulgarities, such as eating his peas with his knife. No first-rate artist will allow his prints to be retouched; he would never be able to bear the look of them afterwards. That the idea of retouching springs from a wrong theory is evident, the improper use of lenses gave false drawing, and people were in artistically and sharply photographed, so that wrinkles, warts, freckles, and even the ports of the skin showed, and then arose the demand for a retoucher to correct all that, and one error led to another, although, without doubt, the false work of a retoucher is much truer than the false work of an uneducated operator. Certainly people do not see, at the distance a photograph is taken from, the wrinkles, spots, and other small blemishes, and they are too uneducated to see the falseness of tone which retouching engenders. Of all the photographers who talk glibly of art, we warrant scarcely one is able to distinguish between a bust carved by a stonemason, one carved by a mediocre sculptor, and one carved by a master, in fact we have proved this, and yet they talk, talk, write, and lecture on art; while to an artist the difference between each of those three busts is as great as the difference between a mountain, a hillock, and a marsh. The public see the warts and spots and call them false, the greater falsity of tone and retouching they cannot distinguish. An etcher once remarked to us, "How is it photographers seem to do everything to make photographs anything but photographs?" And such is the case; the matchless beauty of a pure and artistic photograph does not satisfy their vulgar minds, and yet such is the only kind of photograph at which artists will look.