I have a beauty project where we are making a norway version - a “unretouched” version , which in itself is not a problem but then i just glanced at the first round of notes and there are a lot of very detailed grading comments like remove redness here, make shadow lighter here blah blah.
Anyone knows where the line is for “retouched” vs “unretouched” ? its not our first norway delivery but it was never that “on the line”.
Obviously we asked clients legal counsel but i am just interested in experiences people has with this from a production side?
I hope you do get feedback from the Norwegian side. They are quite laid-back and will have an early Friday tomorrow probably. But I will ask a still photographer friend of mine tomorrow. Most of my job is with food so haven’t crossed that unretouched line or even come close to it.
I’ve never encountered anything like this, but I’ll throw in an opinion anyway. It’s really not your issue; it’s your clients. I would do what they ask and if Norway has an issue, your client can pay you to do it again. If instead your client wants to put it on you, then you need to ask for written guidelines, but I find that unlikely.
In photo journalism there is certain leeway allowed in tweeking colour and lighting to make something more presentable so long as you are not altering the composition and content of the scene, so I imagine that tweeking existing colours and hues is within the realm of non-retouched.
Joanne did a spot once in which the talent declares “I’m not wearing falsies” (fake eyelashes) when she was very much wearing false eyelashes. They got away with it by touching out the practical ones and putting in picture perfect CG. If they got called out on it, it wasn’t her problem.
The law was passed especially to protect the body image positivity of teenagers on social media. But of course it affects all the digital media. Unfortunately it was passed without any photography associations being present, so it literally says, “any adjustment after the camera is a retouch”. No professional image is untouched after the camera so there is a lot of argument there.
Norwegians being very civil, follow the law, but there is some flexibility as there is in everything. My photographer friend says it’s OK to treat grading as not retouch, but any pixel modification, texture manipulation, deforming the image are a no-go.
I would send a version with the grade but without the facial retouches and make it clear that it of course has color correction, but no pixel/texture/geometry modifications and leave it to the local agency to treat it however they want. You should not take any legal responsibility about it.
The retouched version alsa has to have a disclaimer stating the fact, and it should cover 7% of the visible image.
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