One thing about this profession still feels strange to me, even after all these years. You can spend hours working on an image that will eventually be seen by thousands, sometimes millions of people. People will know the photographer. They may know the model, the brand, the stylist, the makeup artist. Very often, they will never know who retouched the image. And for a long time I didn't really think much about it. That was simply how the profession worked.
When good work is supposed to disappear
There is a certain contradiction built into retouching. If I do my job well, ideally you shouldn't be looking at the image thinking about my work. You shouldn't notice the skin correction. You shouldn't notice that something distracting was removed. You shouldn't be able to point at an area and immediately understand what happened there in post-production. The finished image should still feel like the photograph. So in a strange way, being invisible is part of doing the job well. I actually like that part of retouching. I've never wanted the technique to become more important than the image. But professional invisibility has another side.
A portfolio never shows the whole career
This becomes especially obvious after you have worked in the industry for a long time. There are images I have worked on that I can show. There are others I cannot. Sometimes there is an NDA. Sometimes the client never gives permission to use the work. Sometimes an image appears in a publication or campaign, but the post-production credits simply aren't there. And sometimes there isn't even a dramatic reason. You did the job. The image went out into the world. Then you moved on to the next one. A retoucher's public portfolio can therefore be a surprisingly incomplete record of their actual career. Someone looking at it may see twenty projects. Behind those twenty may be years of work they will never see. This is one of the unusual things about our profession that I don't think I understood when I started.
Credits matter more than I used to think
I don't think retouchers need to be at the center of attention. Most of us probably chose the wrong profession if that was the goal. But I do think our names should be part of the credits when credits are given. Recently I noticed that Retouching Academy included this explicitly in its Code of Professional Practice. Their position is simple: credit the people who contributed to the final image, including the photographer, makeup artist, stylist, retoucher, assistants and others involved in the production. That caught my attention. Not because I suddenly think every image needs a long list of names underneath it. But because credits create a professional record. They tell us who actually participated in making something. For a profession where so much work happens quietly at the final stage, that record matters.
The industry seems to be thinking about this too
Another thing happened recently that made me think about the subject again. A new international Retoucher of the Year competition was created specifically around retouching. What interested me wasn't simply the competition itself. It was the problem its founder described. A portfolio doesn't always tell the full story. Some strong work cannot be shown because of NDAs or permissions, and people haven't necessarily had equal access to major photographers or clients. The competition therefore gives participants the same RAW files and creative brief so the work itself can be compared more directly. I found that interesting because it acknowledges something retouchers know very well. Professional ability and public visibility are not always the same thing. You can be extremely visible because you are good at presenting your work. You can also be extremely good and have very little public evidence of what you have actually done. Most careers probably contain some version of this, but retouching seems especially prone to it.
Maybe this is changing
When I started working with images, I didn't think much about whether retouchers were seen as independent creative professionals. I was thinking about the image in front of me. That is still what matters when I'm working. But the profession around that work has changed. Retouching is discussed more openly now. There are dedicated communities, specialist tools, professional standards, competitions, discussions about AI, visual judgment, authorship and the future of post-production. And perhaps part of becoming a more established profession is simply learning to put names to the work that has always been happening behind the image. I don't need someone looking at a finished photograph to notice the retouching. Actually, I would rather they didn't. But I no longer think that means the retoucher has to disappear with it.