Exercise 20. Improvement

For this exercise I used a photo of my youngest son and utilised Lightroom to concentrate on his face to give it slightly less exposure and some more detail to bring it out from the surroundings a little.  I also utilised the healing brush to cover over a couple of skin marks.

This is the original:

 And this is the altered version:

The limits of how far this could be taken to remain a legitimate photograph are difficult to answer.  I believe that if you are not fundamentally altering the representation of the person that the picture is taken of it is ok to make small corrections.  It might be ok to make more corrections if that is the intent of the photograph, for example a comedy shot extending a particular feature for a desired effect might be perfectly acceptable to all.

Exercise 19 Correction

For this exercise I used the two images in the resource area of the OCA website, the first one was the image with dust on it.

This is my corrected image, I have used the healing brush and also increased the luminance slightly so as not expose where I have made the changes.  I am reasonably pleased with the image, I have tried not to over correct the detail

The second image is the one that needed some flare correction:

For the edited version I used the healing brush and it was pretty straightforward to blend the lens flare out of the shot:

I am happy to make these adjustments and have no issues having done it.  I think it is OK to repair images that have blemishes created by the camera not the composition.   However I can see where it might be inappropriate, particularly in someone else's work or if the blemish was part of the picture.