Chapter 29 — Exercises

Retouching is learned the same way shooting is: by doing it, looking hard, and being honest about what you changed. Many of these exercises ask you to edit, some ask you to judge, and several ask you to write the one thing that matters most — the sentence defending where you drew the line. A phone works for every editing task here; the tools differ, the judgment does not. Difficulty is marked ⭐ (warm-up), ⭐⭐ (core), ⭐⭐⭐ (stretch). Do the starred and odd-numbered ones at minimum; model answers and critiques for those are in the book's Answers to Selected Exercises. Keep your edits and your originals side by side — the comparison is the lesson.

A standing rule for this chapter: save the original next to every edit, and write down what you changed. An edit you can't compare to the original, and can't describe, is one you can't defend.

Part A — The toolkit (Shoot This / Edit This)

Exercise 29.1 ⭐ — Heal vs. clone, felt in the hands. Find or shoot one image with a smooth area (sky, skin, water) and one with a hard edge or repeating structure (a railing, brickwork, a horizon). Introduce a small "fix" target in each (a dust spot, a stray mark). Repair each both ways — once with the healing tool, once with the clone stamp — and look closely. Write two sentences: when did heal win, when did clone win, and what gave each away when used on the wrong surface?

Exercise 29.2 ⭐ — Sample like a pro. Take a portrait with a blemish near the jawline (or add a mark to practice). Heal it twice: first sampling carelessly from a differently lit part of the face, then sampling from skin at the same distance from the light and the same focus. Compare. Describe exactly what the bad sample did to the repair. This single habit — matched sampling — is most of clean retouching.

Exercise 29.3 ⭐⭐ — Dodge and burn a face. Take one flat, evenly developed portrait. Using a low-strength dodge-and-burn brush (or selective brightness on a phone), brighten the eyes a touch, lift the lit side of the face, and burn down a distracting bright background corner. Build it in passes. Make a before/after pair. Then deliberately over-do a second version until the dodging visibly glows. Keep all three; note the exact point where subtle became obvious.

Exercise 29.4 ⭐⭐ — Remove the wallpaper repeat. Clone-stamp a single source patch of textured ground (grass, gravel) across a large area until you can see the repetition. Now fix it: vary the source point every few strokes, and heal the smooth parts. Document what killed the repeat. This teaches you to recognize the most common clone tell in other people's work, too.

Exercise 29.5 ⭐⭐ — Distraction sweep. Shoot a portrait at the park bench (or any bench) and deliberately let some incidental clutter into the background — a paper cup, a crisp packet, a stray sign. Then remove only the genuinely incidental items. Before you start, write a one-line prediction of what you'll remove and what you'll leave; afterward, note whether your judgment held.

Exercise 29.6 ⭐⭐⭐ — Invisible is the goal. Retouch one portrait as cleanly as you can — distractions gone, light shaped, skin evened — and then show the finished image to someone without the original and ask them to point to anything that was retouched. If they can find your edits, you went too far somewhere. Note what gave you away and re-do that area more subtly. The target is undetectable.

Part B — Skin and restraint

Exercise 29.7 ⭐ — The halve-it test. Take any portrait and push a skin-smoothing slider (phone or desktop) to where it first looks "good." Screenshot it. Now halve the effect and screenshot again. Compare the two against the original at full size. Which keeps the pores? Which keeps the person? Write one sentence on what the texture does for believability.

Exercise 29.8 ⭐⭐ — Frequency separation in plain terms (or its phone twin). On a portrait, even out a blotch of redness or an uneven patch without touching the texture — using true frequency-separation layers if you have them, or an edge-aware smoothing brush at low strength if you're on a phone. The success criterion is binary: at the end, can you still see every pore? Keep the original beside it and describe the difference between fixing tone and destroying texture.

Exercise 29.9 ⭐⭐ — Temporary vs. permanent sort. Photograph (or find) a portrait of an older face with visible character — laugh lines, weathering, freckles, maybe a scar. List every "imperfection" you can see, then sort each into temporary (fair to remove) or permanent/characteristic (keep, or only with explicit consent). Edit only the temporary column. Compare to a version where you also erased the permanent column. Which one is still that person?

Exercise 29.10 ⭐⭐⭐ — Keep the skin the color it is. Take a portrait of someone with a deeper skin tone (or any skin tone, but this matters most for darker skin) and run it through a default "beautify"/auto-enhance filter. Compare the filtered skin color and lightness to the original at full brightness. Did the tool shift the hue or lighten the skin? Now do an honest edit that evens tone without changing complexion. Write what you found about the automatic filter — this is a real, documented failure mode and you should be able to spot it.

Part C — The line: enhancement vs. manipulation (Judgment)

Exercise 29.11 ⭐ — Sort the edits. Here are ten edits to the same park portrait. Label each E (enhancement — record preserved) or M (manipulation — record changed): (a) lift the shadows; (b) remove a sensor-dust spot in the sky; (c) heal one pimple; (d) remove the subject's wedding ring; (e) brighten the eyes; (f) add a dramatic sky that wasn't there; (g) burn down a blown corner; (h) slim the subject's waist; (i) remove a crisp packet on the grass behind them; (j) move the subject onto a different background. Write the one-sentence test you used.

Exercise 29.12 ⭐⭐ — The same cone, two purposes. Describe a single landscape with one incidental eyesore in it (a traffic cone, a sign, a parked car). Now write two short verdicts: is removing it ethical (1) for a piece of personal landscape art, and (2) for a news photo about the place? Justify each by naming the promise the photograph makes to its viewer. Same edit, opposite verdicts — explain why.

Exercise 29.13 ⭐⭐ — Apply the distraction test. Pick three things you might want to remove from your own recent photos. For each, run the distraction test: was it incidental to what the photo is about, and would a reasonable viewer feel deceived to learn it was removed? Write your reasoning and a verdict for each, assuming the photo is for your personal portfolio. Then re-run all three assuming the photo is documentary — note which verdicts flip.

Exercise 29.14 ⭐⭐⭐ — Write the boundary case. Invent the hardest enhancement/manipulation judgment call you can — one where reasonable photographers might genuinely disagree (e.g., removing a logo from clothing in a documentary portrait; cleaning a distracting reflection from glasses in a journalistic headshot). Argue both sides in a paragraph each, then state where you land and the principle that decided it. The goal is not a "right" answer but a defensible one.

Part D — The ethics line by context (Fix the Photo / Judgment)

Exercise 29.15 ⭐ — Match the promise to the line. For each context — personal snapshot, wedding portrait, news photo, face-cream advertisement, gallery fine art — write in one line the promise it makes to the viewer and therefore how much retouching it permits. Order them from most permissive to strictest. Check yourself against Figure 29.6.

Exercise 29.16 ⭐⭐ — Fix the photo: wrong line carried. A hobbyist heals a tourist out of their travel photo (fine), then sells that frame to a newspaper as a documentary image of an "empty" plaza. Diagnose exactly what went wrong, name the moment the edit became unethical, and prescribe what the photographer should have done at each step. (Hint: the edit didn't change; the promise did.)

Exercise 29.17 ⭐⭐ — The advertising line. You're retouching a face-cream ad. List three edits that are acceptable stylization (puffery) and three that would cross into a false material claim about the product. Then explain the difference in one sentence — what separates legal styling from deceptive claim-making?

Exercise 29.18 ⭐⭐⭐ — Draft a retouching clause. Write a short, plain-language paragraph you could add to a portrait or wedding contract that tells the client exactly what retouching you do and don't do by default (e.g., "I remove temporary blemishes and distractions and enhance lighting; I do not reshape bodies or remove permanent features unless you specifically request it, and even then we'll discuss it"). This is both an ethical and a business document — make it honest and clear.

Part E — Representation and responsibility

Exercise 29.19 ⭐⭐ — The body you didn't reshape. Take a full-length or three-quarter portrait of a willing person. Finish it with the honest order — light, distractions, restrained skin — and do not reshape the body in any way. Write a sentence on why leaving the real body intact is the right default, and how it feels different from the reflex to "fix" a waist or a jaw.

Exercise 29.20 ⭐⭐ — Read the culture. Find five widely circulated images (ads, magazine covers, influencer posts) and, for each, note any signs of body reshaping, de-aging, or skin-lightening you can reasonably infer. You are not accusing anyone — you are training your eye to see the cumulative ideal these images build. Write what "normal body" these five images, taken together, quietly assert.

Exercise 29.21 ⭐⭐⭐ — Inclusive by default. Photograph (with full consent) a person with a visible characteristic some filters would "correct" — a birthmark, vitiligo, a scar, grey hair, a hearing aid, a wheelchair. Retouch the image to serve their dignity: even the light, remove a genuine temporary distraction if any, and keep the characteristic. Ask the subject if the result honors how they want to be seen. Write what you learned about whose judgment governs the edit.

Part F — The disclosed workflow

Exercise 29.22 ⭐ — Keep the edit log. Retouch one image and, as you go, write a literal list of every change ("removed dust spot, upper-left; healed one blemish, chin; eyes +10% dodge; kept all lines"). Save the log with the file. Read it back: would any line embarrass you to show the subject? That line is the one to reconsider.

Exercise 29.23 ⭐⭐ — Run the full order. Take one portrait through the entire Figure 29.7 order, in sequence, including the explicit STOP at step 5 to compare against the original and check whether the person changed. Note what (if anything) you caught at the stop that you would otherwise have shipped. Keep the finished image and its log.

Exercise 29.24 ⭐⭐ — Disclose it. Make one deliberately stylized image — a composite, a heavy grade, anything clearly beyond a straight photograph. Then write the disclosure it would need to be honest in three different venues: a personal social post, a magazine page, and a photo contest. Note how the required disclosure changes with the venue's promise.

Exercise 29.25 ⭐⭐⭐ — Defend it out loud. Pick your most heavily retouched image and explain, out loud (to a friend, a journal, or a recording), exactly what you changed and why each change kept the photograph's promise. If at any point you find yourself wanting to hide an edit rather than explain it, stop — you have found the edit that crossed the line. Re-do it, then defend the new version.

Part G — Interleaved (mixing earlier chapters)

Exercise 29.26 ⭐⭐ — Develop, then retouch (Ch.26 → Ch.29). Take one RAW file. First do the full global develop from Chapter 26 (white balance, exposure, contrast, tone curve), then retouch locally. Now try it in the wrong order — retouch a version before developing, then develop. Compare the effort and the result. Write why retouching belongs after the global develop.

Exercise 29.27 ⭐⭐ — Light it right so you barely retouch (Ch.13 → Ch.29). Shoot the same portrait twice: once in flat, frontal light, once in soft directional window light (Chapter 13). Retouch both to the same standard. Which one needed far less work? Write the lesson: how getting the light right in camera reduces the retouching — and the temptation — afterward.

Exercise 29.28 ⭐⭐⭐ — The honest series (Ch.5, 7, 8, 13, 26, 29). Build a three-portrait mini-set of three different people, each shot in good light (Ch.5), with intentional color (Ch.7) or as a B&W study (Ch.8), developed (Ch.26), and retouched to the same honest standard (Ch.29). Attach a one-line ethics statement to each. The point is consistency: a body of work is a standard applied repeatedly. Note where holding the standard was hardest.

Stretch challenge

Exercise 29.29 ⭐⭐⭐ — The two-portfolio experiment. Take five portraits and finish each one twice: an honest edition (temporary distractions, restrained skin, identity intact) and a "magazine" edition (reshaped, de-aged, skin perfected). Lay both fives side by side. Live with them for a day, then write a page: which set you would put your name on, which set the subjects would prefer, and what the experiment taught you about the difference between making a photograph better and making it lie. This is the whole chapter, made personal.

Model answers and model critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises appear in the book's "Answers to Selected Exercises." Try each one — edit, judge, and write the defending sentence — before you read them. In retouching, the judgment is the skill, and you build it by deciding.