Headshot Retouching Services
Corporate, executive and actor headshots retouched by hand and matched to one another. One face is easy. Forty faces shot across three offices, two photographers and six months, all reading as a single session, is the part we are actually paid for. Every service is priced on its own, from $2.50 a photo.
8 services · order one or stack three
- Starting Price
$2.50 per Photo
Per-service pricing — skin, eyes, hair and glare are each billed on their own.
Turnaround
24h
Processing capacity
1000+
Rating
4.9 ★ 1,240 reviews
No card required · Reply within 1 hour
16 years on apparel
Image Delivered
In-house editors
Headshot retouching services we Provide .
ight services, each priced on its own. Order one line item or stack four on the same frame — a headshot that only needs glare cleared is never billed as a full retouch.
Basic headshot touch-ups .
Exposure, white balance, brightness and contrast are set first, harsh shadow is lifted off the face, and the obvious distractions are cleared. This is the entry line most sets start on and the one large rosters usually stay on.
It is general improvement without anything being reshaped. Order it on its own for an internal directory, or as the base other services stack on top of.
from $2.50 per photo
- Exposure and white balance
- Harsh shadow lifted
- Crop and straighten to spec
- Brightness and contrast adjusted
- Obvious distractions removed
- Output sized for web or print
Headshot skin smoothing and tone .
Shine from the studio key light, redness across the nose and cheeks, and under-eye shadow are worked one at a time, then tone is evened with frequency separation — colour on one layer, fine texture on another. That separation is why the surface of the skin survives the edit.
Pores and expression lines stay where they were. A headshot is looked at from eighteen inches away on a laptop, so waxy skin is obvious in a way it never is in a printed portrait.
from $2.50 per photo
- Shine and hotspot control
- Under-eye shadow reduced
- Five o'clock shadow calmed
- Frequency-separation tone work
- Redness and patchiness evened
- Pores and texture preserved
Blemish and scar removal.
Spots, marks and temporary irritation are taken out individually with the clone and healing tools, sampled from the subject’s own skin so the repair carries the right tone and grain. Nothing is blurred away in a pass.
Birthmarks, freckles and permanent scars are left alone unless you tell us otherwise. A staff headshot is used to recognise someone at reception, which is a poor argument for editing out the thing you would recognise them by.
from $2.50 per photo
- Acne and spot removal
- Shaving marks and cuts removed
- Sampled from own skin tone
- Temporary irritation cleared
- Scar softening on request
- Freckles and marks retained
Teeth whitening and eye correction.
Yellow cast is lifted off the teeth with a targeted hue and saturation mask rather than a brightness push, so enamel keeps its natural variation. Catchlights are cleaned and the iris given a little local contrast so the eyes read awake rather than tired at the end of a shoot day.
Both are brightened to the point of looking healthy and stopped there. On a team page, one person with glowing teeth is the only thing anybody sees.
from $2.50 per photo
- Yellow cast neutralised
- Catchlights cleaned
- Bloodshot whites calmed
- Enamel variation kept
- Iris contrast and clarity
- Red-eye corrected
Stray hair and collar cleanup.
Flyaways are tidied against the backdrop, gaps in the hairline are filled by cloning from denser areas of the same head, and the outline is cleaned strand by strand rather than masked into a shape. Collars are straightened, lapels flattened and lint taken off the shoulders.
Movement in the hair is deliberately kept. What we remove is the strand crossing an eyebrow and the twisted collar, because those are what a viewer reads as an unprofessional photo rather than an unprofessional person.
from $3 per photo
- Flyaways off the backdrop
- Outline cleaned strand by strand
- Lint and dandruff removed
- Hairline gaps filled
- Collar and lapel straightened
- Shirt creases softened
Corporate background clean-up and replacement .
Creases in the paper, uneven falloff, gear in the corner of an office shoot and shadow cast by the subject are cleaned or evened out. Where a brand background is specified we cut the hairline by hand and drop the subject onto your exact grey, white or gradient.
Backdrop value is the first thing that gives away a headshot shot on a different day. Once your hex is on file, every new hire lands on the same tone without anybody having to remember what it was.
from $3 per photo
- Creases and seams removed
- Brand colour matched to hex
- Canvas extended for crop room
- Falloff evened across frame
- Hand-cut hairline masking
- Blurred office background option
Glasses glare removal.
Reflections and hotspots are cleared from the lenses without blurring the area around the eyes or losing iris detail, and the frame’s own shadow on the cheek is kept so the glasses still sit on the face rather than float above it.
Where a reflection covers an eye entirely there is no data to recover, so we rebuild it from an adjacent frame if you send one. On a corporate shoot, two extra exposures per glasses-wearer makes this the cheapest line on the invoice instead of the most expensive.
from $5 per photo
- Lens reflections cleared
- Iris detail preserved
- Eye rebuilt from adjacent frame
- Softbox hotspots removed
- Frame shadow retained
- Smudges and dust cleaned
Four steps, no account needed.
Upload & brief
Drop RAW or JPEG into Drive, Dropbox or our FTP. No sign-up, no card, and 3 portraits free on a first order.
≈ 1h reply
Composite the join
Tick the services you want and add a reference frame you already like. We reply with a written quote inside an hour.
≈ 12–24h
Independent QA
Review at full size and send notes. Revisions on anything we got wrong are free and uncapped, with no round limit.
Every image
Deliver & revise
Delivered in your naming and folder structure as JPEG, TIFF or layered PSD, ready to drop into your gallery.
≈ 24h
Turnaround
Most orders come back within 24 hours, and small sets often the same day. A 200 to 500 headshot roster usually takes two to three working days depending on how many services you stack per frame. If a deadline is going to slip you hear it from us before the deadline, not after.
What each level of finish includes .
Three common combinations, with exactly what an editor applies at each one. Every list below is what actually happens to the file, in order.
Natural headshot clean-up .
The lightest finish, and enough for most internal directories. We set exposure and white balance, lift harsh shadow off the face, clear what is temporary and tidy the backdrop. Nobody looks retouched and nothing about the person has changed.
This is the level we would pick for a large roster on a tight budget, because consistency does more for a team page than depth of finish on any single frame.
from $2.50 per photo
- Colour and white-balance correction
- Light skin-tone evening
- Under-eye shadow reduced
- Blemish and shine removal
- Stray-hair tidy
- Backdrop tone evened
Business and corporate headshot editing .
Our most ordered combination and the level we would pick for anything client-facing. Frequency separation evens tone without touching texture, dodge and burn shapes the light by hand, collar and clothing are tidied and the whole set is matched to your spec.
The rule we work to is that a viewer should not be able to point at what changed, only notice the person looks well and the page looks deliberate. If you want an area left alone, say so and it stays untouched.
from $6 per photo
- Everything in basic touch-ups
- Hand dodge and burn shaping
- Collar and clothing cleanup
- Frequency-separation skin work
- Eye brightening and teeth
- Matched to your house spec
Executive and editorial finish.
For board portraits, press kits and anything that will be enlarged or run in print. Every pass is worked at 200%: skin detailed rather than smoothed, hair worked strand by strand, clothing pressed, background replaced to brand, and light shaped across the whole face rather than locally.
This is the level that survives a full-page print and a hostile crop, which is why leadership pages sit here rather than one tier down.
from $14 per photo
- Everything in corporate standard
- Clothing and wrinkle work
- Full-face light shaping
- Strand-level hair detailing
- Background replaced to brand
- Print-size QA at 200%
What makes a best-in-class headshot.
Six checks every headshot passes before release. It is the standard that separates a professional headshot retouching service from a smoothing filter, and it is the same list we hand new hires in their first week.
01
Pores survive at 200%
Zoom to twice actual size and skin still has surface. If texture has gone waxy or cheeks have gone flat, the frame is reworked, not shipped.
02
The person is still recognisable
Permanent marks, freckles, and expression lines stay unless you asked otherwise. We remove what is temporary, never what is characteristic.
03
Eyes and teeth read as healthy
Brightened enough to look awake, never enough to glow. A pushed eye or pure-white tooth is the fastest way to make an edit obvious.
04
Backdrop matches the spec
Sampled and measured against your value, not judged by eye. Two greys that look identical alone are obviously different side by side.
05
The set holds as a set
Skin warmth, contrast and crop checked in a contact sheet rather than frame by frame. Consistency is the deliverable, not a side effect.
06
Spec sheet obeyed
Crop ratio, canvas size, output format, layer structure and file name checked against your sheet. Getting the naming wrong costs an HR team an afternoon.
Sixteen years as a professional headshot retouching service provider .
A headshot looks simple until you put forty of them in a grid. What follows is what stands behind every order, stated plainly.
2010
2M+ portraits retouched
Single actor headshots through to 3,000-frame rosters for firms shooting across several offices. We have met most faces, backdrops and briefs this craft can throw at us.
60+
Editors on retouching alone
A dedicated retouch floor, five of them Adobe Certified Professionals in Photoshop. Nobody rotates in from a cutout queue for a leadership portrait.
98.6%
First-pass approval
Measured across every retouch order in 2025. When a frame does come back, the reason is logged and the editor who worked it sees the note.
NDA
Written commitments
Signed NDAs, encrypted transfer, files deleted after 90 days. Staff photographs are personal data and are handled as such, not left on a shared drive.
What we see go wrong in Client files .
Most difficult retouches were made difficult on set. These are the six issues that cost our editors the most time, and each one is cheap to avoid before the shutter clicks.
The backdrop moved between days
Same paper, different distance from the light, and the grey shifts half a stop. Meter the backdrop at the start of every day and note the reading.
Softbox square in both lenses
A reflection covering an iris cannot be recovered, only rebuilt. Ask glasses wearers to tilt the frames down a few degrees and take two extra frames.
Mixed colour temperature
Office window on one cheek and tungsten on the other splits the skin into two tones. Correcting it evenly is slow and it never fully disappears.
Crop with no headroom
If a square LinkedIn crop and a 4:5 web crop both have to come out of one frame, we need canvas above the head. Shoot looser than the final crop.
No reference on the first order
Forty headshots, forty interpretations of natural. Five minutes agreeing a reference on the trial saves a revision round on every batch after it.
Names that do not match the HR list
IMG_4471 helps nobody. Send a naming convention with the upload and every file comes back matched to your directory export.
Hand retouching vs. the alternatives .
An AI headshot generator costs almost nothing and a preset costs less. This is where a hand headshot editing service earns the difference against automation, and where it does not.
| Hand retouching | Lightroom preset | Ai portrait filter | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keeps real skin texture | ✓ Pores intact | Partly | ✗ Smoothed |
| Person stays recognisable | ✓ Always | ✓ | ✗ Features shift |
| Consistent across a roster | ✓ Spec + contact sheet | Varies by frame | Varies by face |
| Backdrop matched to brand hex | ✓ Measured | ✗ Global only | Approximate |
| Editable later by your team | ✓ Layered PSD | Settings only | ✗ Flattened |
| Cost per photo | From $2.50 | Near zero | Near zero |
Rosters we keep consistent .
-18% ReturnsGhost mannequin edits that cut returns in half
A fast-fashion label moved its full product catalogue onto our 24-hour queue, with every garment ghosted, colour-matched and sized to their store templates.
The turnaround is unbelievable — 24 hours, flawless every time. Our product return rate dropped 18% after switching to Clipp Out Line.
+24% ConversionMacro retouching that made every stone sell
A fine-jewellery house moved its campaign and model imagery onto our high-end queue, with skin, metal and stone each finished to a separate standard on the same frame.
Jewelry retouching at this level is rare. They preserve every reflection and gemstone facet while making the piece look magazine-ready.
400+ Weekly ShotsHigh-volume automotive shots without the back-and-forth
A dealership network routes its weekly inventory straight into our queue, with consistent lighting, clean backgrounds and zero revision rounds.
We send 400+ automotive shots a week. Consistent quality, tight deadlines, zero back-and-forth. Exactly what a high-volume studio needs.
+31% InquiriesListings that look believable, not overedited
A real-estate marketing team routes every exterior and interior shoot through our queue for natural sky replacements and true-to-life window pull-throughs.
Sky replacements and window pull-throughs that look genuinely natural. Agents trust the images — and so do buyers.
Sunil Barman, Retouch & Colour Lead
Sunil leads our retouching floor and the 22-editor team inside it. She wrote the consistency spec our corporate clients are graded against, signs off the sample batch on every new roster, and reviews this page each quarter against our current rates, turnaround and what we are actually seeing in client files.
Headshot retouching services, answered .
Each service is priced on its own, starting at $2.50 per photo for basic headshot touch-ups, skin smoothing, blemish removal or teeth and eye correction. Background work and hair cleanup are $3, consistency matching is $4 and glasses glare removal is $5. You pay only for what a frame needs.
Yes, and it is the service most corporate clients come for. We build a written spec from your reference frame covering crop, backdrop value, skin warmth and contrast, then grade every headshot against it rather than against itself. A roster shot over months still reads as one session.
Yes. We remove what is temporary and leave what is characteristic. Skin keeps its pores through frequency separation, and freckles, expression lines and permanent marks stay unless you tell us otherwise. A headshot that does not match the person walking into the meeting has failed at its only job.
Yes. We clean, extend or fully replace the backdrop to a brand grey, white or gradient, cutting the hairline by hand so strands stay visible against the new tone. Give us the hex value once and every hire after that lands on the same background.
Standard turnaround is 24 hours and 12 hours on a priority plan. A 200 to 500 headshot roster is usually back in two to three working days, with a sample batch of ten sent early for approval before the rest is worked.
Yes. Orders over $500 in a calendar month receive 15% off, over $2,000 receive 25% off, and over $5,000 receive 35% off plus a dedicated retoucher and 12-hour SLA. Discounts apply automatically and need no contract.
Yes. We deliver headshot retouching services in the USA daily, alongside the UK, Canada, Australia and Europe. Our floor runs around the clock, so a shoot uploaded at the end of a US business day is usually finished by the following morning. Billing is in USD and there is no minimum order.
Send 3 headshots. Put them side by side .
No card, no commitment. We will run our portrait retouching services on your own frames, deliver them at full resolution