Retouching before Photoshop
Every claim made about digital editing was made first about the retouching pencil, the airbrush and the combination print. The tools improved. The debate did not move.
Photographic images have been altered since the 1850s. Techniques included pencil and knife work on the negative, combination printing from multiple negatives, hand colouring, and from the late nineteenth century the airbrush. Retouching was a recognised paid trade with manuals and specialist equipment. Digital editing from around 1990 changed the speed, reversibility and accessibility of the process rather than introducing the practice. Some jurisdictions now require disclosure labels on commercially retouched images.
In 1857 Oscar Rejlander exhibited a large photograph called The Two Ways of Life, assembled from around thirty separate negatives printed in combination onto a single sheet. The following year Henry Peach Robinson exhibited Fading Away, a scene of a dying girl surrounded by her family, made by combining five negatives. Neither picture was taken. Both were built.
The argument that followed was ferocious and entirely familiar. Critics said the pictures were not photographs, that they were deceptions, that the medium's claim to truth was being squandered. Defenders said that a photographer composes as a painter composes and that the sheet of paper is the work. That exchange took place before the invention of the light bulb, and it has been repeated, almost verbatim, at every subsequent technical change.
Working the negative
The workhorse technique was retouching the negative, and it is worth understanding physically because it explains why the results look the way they do.
A glass plate negative carries the image in a thin layer, usually protected by varnish. The retoucher works on that surface with a very hard pencil, adding graphite in fine strokes to build up density. Density on a negative means lightness on the print, so drawing on a line under the eye makes that line print paler, and the line softens or disappears. A knife or scraper removes emulsion, producing the opposite effect. Fine stippling, worked with a magnifier over a lightbox with an angled mirror throwing light through the plate, could smooth a complexion entirely.
By the 1860s this was standard practice. Manuals were published. Specialist desks were manufactured. Studios employed retouchers, frequently women, at piece rates, and the skill was taught and advertised. There is a substantial nineteenth century professional literature on the subject, held in library collections, and it argues about the same things practitioners argue about now: how much is too much, whether the sitter should be told, whether a likeness that has been improved is still a likeness.
The airbrush
The airbrush, patented in the later nineteenth century, was developed for photographic retouching before it became an illustrator's tool. It sprays a fine controllable mist of pigment or dye, and on a photographic print it can render a perfectly smooth gradient that no brush can match. It is the direct ancestor of the digital tool that still bears its name, and it did the same job: removing texture, unifying tone, softening a boundary.
Airbrushed prints dominated commercial and fashion photography through the middle of the twentieth century, alongside the studio lighting conventions described in the essay on the close up. Magazine retouching studios were substantial operations, and their output is visible in almost any glossy image from the period once you know what to look for: skin without pores, hair with no stray strands, a highlight on the lip that has been drawn rather than caught.
The other use
Retouching has a political history that runs alongside the cosmetic one and cannot be separated from it, because the techniques are identical. Figures were removed from official photographs in the Soviet Union as they fell from favour, and the resulting sequence of altered prints was documented by David King in his study of the practice, published as The Commissar Vanishes. The same skills that took a shadow out from under an actress's eye took a person out of a photograph of a parade.
This is why the ethics of retouching have never been a purely commercial question. The photographic image acquired evidentiary authority in the nineteenth century, in courts, in medicine, in journalism and in the passport office, and every technique for altering it exists in tension with that authority.
The pencil that softened a jawline and the brush that erased a commissar were the same pencil, held by people with the same training.
- The claim
- Photo manipulation began with Photoshop, and photographs before the digital era can be trusted as records.
- Where it appears to come from
- A general assumption rather than a specific claim, reinforced by the way digital editing was reported in the 1990s as an unprecedented threat to photographic truth. It persists in casual discussion of historic images and occasionally in serious writing.
- What is actually established
- Established: composite printing from multiple negatives dates from the 1850s; negative retouching was routine studio practice by the 1860s; the airbrush was developed for photographic retouching in the late nineteenth century; extensive political manipulation of photographs is documented across the twentieth century. What digital editing changed is speed, cost, reversibility, accessibility and the disappearance of physical evidence of the alteration. A retouched glass negative shows the pencil work under raking light. A retouched file shows nothing.
The disclosure question
The modern regulatory response has taken two forms. Advertising regulators in several countries, including the United Kingdom, have upheld complaints against advertisements in which post production exaggerated the effect the product was claiming to produce, which treats retouching as a question of misleading advertising rather than of body image. That is a narrow but enforceable approach: if the lashes in a mascara advertisement were lengthened in editing, the advertisement misrepresents the product.
The second approach is labelling. France introduced a requirement in 2017 for commercial photographs where a body has been digitally slimmed or widened to carry a notice that the image has been retouched. Israel had introduced a related measure in 2012, and Norway followed with its own labelling requirement. These schemes are recent, their scope is narrower than usually reported, and evidence on their effects is limited.
What has actually changed
Three things, none of which is the existence of editing.
Access. Retouching was a trade requiring apprenticeship, equipment and a studio. It is now a slider on a telephone, applied by default, often before the image is even recorded. The live preview filter is a genuinely new object: an altered image of yourself, in motion, in real time, which no earlier technology could produce.
Evidence. Physical retouching leaves physical traces. Digital editing leaves metadata at best, and metadata is trivially stripped. The forensic problem is real and it is getting harder.
Volume. A nineteenth century studio retouched the negatives it sold. The number of edited images a person encountered in a year was small. That number is now effectively the number of images they see, which changes the reference point against which an unedited face is judged.
The argument about whether any of this is acceptable is more than a hundred and sixty years old and shows no sign of resolving, which suggests it is not really an argument about technique. It is an argument about what a picture of a person is for.
Where to look
Readers who want to go further should start with the holdings themselves rather than with summaries of them. The National Science and Media Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum both publish catalogue and research material relevant to this article. Both links are given for reference only. Neither institution has been assessed by us, neither has any connection to this magazine, and nothing here is an endorsement of any organisation.
Questions readers send us
When did photographic retouching begin?
Composite printing from multiple negatives was being exhibited by the mid 1850s, and pencil retouching of negatives was standard studio practice by the 1860s. It was a recognised trade with published manuals and specialist equipment well before the end of the nineteenth century.
How was a glass negative retouched?
With very hard pencils, a scraper and a blending stump, worked over a lightbox at magnification. Adding graphite to the negative makes that area print lighter, so drawing over a line or blemish causes it to fade in the print. A scraper removes emulsion and does the reverse.
Was the airbrush invented for photographs?
It was patented in the later nineteenth century and used for photographic retouching before it became widespread as an illustration tool. It produces gradients no brush can match, which is exactly what smoothing a printed complexion requires.
Do any countries require retouched images to be labelled?
Several have introduced requirements covering commercial images where body shape has been digitally altered, including France from 2017, with related measures in Israel and Norway. The scope is narrower than commonly reported and applies to specific categories of commercial image rather than to all editing.
Is digital editing detectable?
Sometimes, through forensic analysis of compression artefacts, lighting inconsistency and sensor noise, but reliably far less often than people assume. Physical retouching leaves marks on an object; digital editing leaves a file that looks like any other file.
- National Science and Media Museum Photographic processes, retouching equipment and the history of image manipulation.
- Victoria and Albert Museum Photography collection, including nineteenth century composite and combination prints.
- British Library Nineteenth century photographic manuals, trade journals and studio literature.
- Advertising Standards Authority Published rulings on post production and misleading claims in cosmetics advertising.
- Science Museum Group History of imaging technology and reproduction.
The Gazette, four times a year
One long letter a quarter: what we have been reading, what turned out to be untrue, and what is worth going to see. No selling, because we have nothing to sell you.
Sponsor lineEach issue carries one sponsor line, labelled as such and set apart from the writing. Sponsors are shown the rate card, never the copy. See the rate card.