Photo Retouching

The question is often asked, "should I retouch my photos or leave them in their original state"? Photography for auction is meant to bring an object to life, to make it look as real as possible.

Begin by perfecting your system - camera, lighting, and technique - so that the raw photography accurately captures the realistic nature of the object and no retouching is required. The viewer of your auction - sitting at his or her computer - should be able to see and appreciate the object as if it were there in front of them.

If you do need to correct an image (color, contrast, saturation, etc), never correct the image to make it look better, always correct the image so that it looks more realistic. Always correct to the reality.

There are a number low and modestly priced photo retouching software programs availble. These include:

Mac: Graphic Converter : Photobie
PC - NeoPaint, Corel PaintShop and Paintshop Pro (PC and MAC)

Adobe Photoshop is also very poular, but a more expensive alternative.

It is well worth the effort and time and test different configurations, settings, lighting and equipment, then select that which works best.