Professional Before-and-After Retouching Checklist

The short answer: toggle between the original and the retouched version and ask whether it is still the same person. Then check texture at 100%, tone and shape at 50%, and composition at thumbnail size, then the frame against the rest of the set and against the brief. About two minutes a frame, and it catches almost everything.

A retouching checklist is not a substitute for skill. It is a substitute for memory, which is the thing that actually fails at eleven at night on the fortieth frame.

Run this before delivery. It takes about two minutes per frame and catches nearly everything a client would have caught for you.

Before you start: the comparison

Toggle between the original and the retouched version. Not a side-by-side — a toggle, in the same position, at the same zoom.

Ask two questions:

Is it the same person? If the face has changed shape, if the skin tone has shifted, if features have gone — stop and reconsider.

Would the subject recognise this as themselves on a good day? That is the target. Not younger, not smoother, not different.

At 100%: texture and detail

• [ ] Skin texture is visible. Pores and fine lines present. If not, you blurred.
• [ ] No smudged or repeated patches from cloning. Look at the forehead and the cheeks especially.
• [ ] Transitions are intact — hairline, jaw edge, where skin meets clothing.
• [ ] Eyes: catchlights preserved and not cloned into a uniform shape, iris detail present, whites slightly brighter but not grey.
• [ ] Teeth: desaturated rather than brightened, shading toward the back of the mouth kept.
• [ ] Hair: individual strands removed, halo intact, no block-masked outline.
• [ ] No halo where the subject meets the background.
• [ ] Fabric texture and weave still readable.
• [ ] Sharpening artefacts: no bright edges, no crunch.
• [ ] Noise is consistent between subject and background. A filled area with zero grain beside a subject with grain is visible.

At 50%: tone and shape

• [ ] Facial modelling is present. Nose, cheekbones, jaw still have shape.
• [ ] The light direction is consistent across everything in frame, including anything composited.
• [ ] Shadows fall correctly, and anything added to the frame has a contact shadow.
• [ ] Skin tone is neutral and matches across the face, neck and hands. Hands are the most commonly missed.
• [ ] Background falloff is natural rather than flat.
• [ ] The exposure reads correctly without hot or blocked areas.

At thumbnail size: composition and impact

• [ ] The eye goes to the subject's face first — not the teeth, not a bright corner, not the background.
• [ ] No bright distraction at the frame edges.
• [ ] The crop works at the aspect ratios it will be seen in.
• [ ] It holds up small. Most people will first see this at postage-stamp size.

Against the rest of the set

• [ ] Colour matches the other frames in the delivery.
• [ ] Exposure matches.
• [ ] Retouching strength matches. One heavily worked frame among lightly worked ones stands out as much as the reverse.
• [ ] Nothing jumps out in grid view at small thumbnails.

Against the brief

• [ ] Everything the client asked to keep is still there — freckles, scars, tattoos, markings.
• [ ] Nothing was reshaped that was not requested.
• [ ] Every specific request was addressed.
• [ ] Anything you could not do is noted, so it is a conversation rather than a surprise.

Before export

• [ ] Correct colour space for the destination — sRGB for anything on a screen.
• [ ] Correct resolution — full resolution unless a smaller file was requested.
• [ ] Correct format.
• [ ] Metadata as agreed.
• [ ] The master is archived with layers, in the working colour space.

The two checks people skip

Look at it the next day. Fatigue is the single largest cause of overworked retouching, and you cannot see it while tired.

Show it to someone who was not involved. They will spot the teeth in a second.

Why we run this on every set

A final quality check before delivery is listed on every one of our service pages, and this is roughly what it is. The value is not that it finds catastrophes — it rarely does. It is that it finds the two or three small things per set that a client would otherwise have found, and being the one who finds them is most of what "professional" means here.

Why a list beats being careful

A checklist is not a substitute for skill. It is a substitute for memory, which is what actually fails at eleven at night on the fortieth frame of a delivery.

Skill is what lets you fix the thing the list finds. The list is what makes sure you look, on every frame, including the ones you are confident about — and the frames people skip are always the ones they are confident about.

Run it in the same order every time so it becomes automatic. Then the only judgement calls left are the real ones, and you have the attention to make them.

Two items are worth protecting even when time is short: look at it the next day, and check it against the rest of the set. Fatigue and inconsistency are the two failures that survive every other check, and they are the two a client notices first.

Common questions

How long should a quality check take? About two minutes per frame. That is enough to run the whole list and it catches nearly everything a client would have caught for you.

What is the single most useful check? Toggling between the original and the retouched version in the same position at the same zoom, and asking whether it is still the same person.

Why check at three different sizes? Because different failures show at each. Texture problems appear at 100%, tonal and shape problems at 50%, and composition and distraction problems at thumbnail size.

What do people skip most often? Looking at it the next day, and showing it to someone who was not involved. Both catch things that fatigue hides.

Does a checklist replace skill? No — it replaces memory, which is what actually fails at eleven at night on the fortieth frame.

Related reading: 10 Retouching Mistakes Clients Notice Immediately and How to Make an Entire Photo Gallery Look Consistent.