Re-touching Photos

Retouching photos is big business nowadays. It's become an accepted part of certain types of photography - namely Portraits and Fashion/Beauty types of shots. I'm not going to start arguing about whether I believe in retouching or not, or whether I think there's such a thing as too much retouching, but I will say that I, personally, try to keep my retouching to a minimum, and really only indulge in it to keep my skills current. But I'm still surprised sometimes at the amount of work I've seen done on photos of incredibly beautiful models, whom I would normally never have dreamt would need any retouching. The media and the public both crave a certain look and many photographers are happy to oblige.

Here's a particularly interesting site I found recently in my travels, that really reveals the amount of retouching used in media photography today.

http://www.amydresser.com/retouch.html

Let the photos load, and then roll your mouse over to see the before/after images. Let me know if you're NOT surprised...