Cropping
An important but little explored areas of successful retouching is the crop, and this is where family photos are nearly always let down. Too often there’ll be a large area of empty space on either or both sides of the model, distracting the eye from what’s most important – the family member! Better to get this right in-camera, but if you haven’t, don’t be afraid to crop out anything that doesn’t add to the shot. A 4 to 3 is a standard crop ratio for portraiture, so once you select the Crop tool, type 4 and 3 into the Width and Height box for a landscape format image, and 3 and 4 for a portrait format image.