Retouch in terms of photo editing is a fairly broad umbrella term. It ranges from very subtle removal of imperfections in an image to very drastic edits like changing colors and much more. Product photography retouch or product photo editing is a category of retouching, as implied by the term, deals with editing out imperfects of images of products which are to be advertised on an eCommerce website or elsewhere.
There are a few reasons you would want to have your product photographs retouched. Maybe the product that you have to photograph is damaged or has imperfections like scratches and you don’t have a replacement. Perhaps your photo-shoot session is time limited and there isn’t enough time for you to get the photos in the perfect conditions. Maybe the products are not coming out in the photographs in the perfect color that you want. There could be hundreds of reasons. Product photography retouch can solve most of these problems. Easily remove dust, imperfections, change colors and many more.
A lot of business have made a name for themselves by editing product photos in Photoshop. Some of the basic tools for retouching is the clone tool, the blur tool, the sharpen tool and the smudge tool. In general it is not difficult to use these tools in Photoshop but what is really important to master is the artistic vision of knowing how much retouching goes on a product so that it looks natural and realistic. Remember, the best retouches are the ones that don’t look like they are retouched.