Metro Imaging 76 Clerkenwell Rd. London EC1M STN Phone: +44 (0)207 865 0000 Fax: +44 (0)207 865 0001 www.metroimaging.co.uk	HOURLY RATES: Negotiable, depending upon the job SPEED OF TURNAROUND: Depends on client needs CONTACT FOR RETOUCHING SERVICES: Mario Capaldi, creative director, mario@metroimaging.co.uk OTHER PRINCIPALS: Katarina Redlefsen, marketing director	PRIMARY EQUIPMENT: Silicon Graphics hardware using Barco Photo Creator software alongside Macintosh with Photoshop. Increasingly use Macintosh computers, as they “have now become speedworthy.” Fujifilm drum scanner producing 100 mb scans. Output is usually to Iris Contact Proof, which has become generally acceptable by publications as an accurate guide for reproduction. Other output devices include Digital Chromalin or CMYK Fujifilm Pictrography.

METRO IMAGING

Metro imaging has been one of London’s premier photographic laboratories since the 1980s. It was among the first to add digital image manipulation to its range of services. Metro people are “passionate about photography,” says creative director Mario Capaldi, and the company employs nine “image manipulators,” preferring the term to “system operators”—artists in their own right formally trained at art and photographic schools. These specialists cover a range of skills, including 3-D and illustration.

Allan Finnamore, who is originally from Los Angeles, is a director of Metro Imaging and he is making a name for himself as a specialist artist. His clients at Vogue know Finnamore as “The Skin Man.” His background in conventional photographic retouching as well as life drawing give him an understanding of perspective, illustration, lighting, shading and color that are fundamental to his work. He says: “The most important thing that I do is to retouch in a way that the image doesn’t look retouched. That’s the first rule, to make it believable. In order to achieve this, you have to keep even certain blemishes, such as keeping natural skin textures.”

In the Christian Dior campaign photographed by Nick Knight, Finnamore began with a series of scans from the original transparencies and also Polaroids, and, where appropriate, rebuilt the picture of the face, using elements from all the source images. Finnamore then replaced the mouth with one from another frame, in very fine detail. A nose can be selected from one and an eye from another as the “perfect” face is built. “The more that blemishes are airbrushed out, the more plastic the model can look. I’ve noticed in London that a more natural skin texture is popular. So I have a range of customized tools in Photoshop to suit this purpose—filters that can add skin texture, skin tones, pores and tiny hairs. I have customized some airbrushes to paint in ‘single-pore-size’ drops!”

Finnamore has also personalized his software to create his own palettes and even to automate some of the repetitive tasks that he needs to perform—from the initial removal of tiny blemishes on the surface of the skin, to removing and replacing the sharpest or darkest of the pores. Blood vessels underneath the surface of the skin may appear as dark patches or red spots, which can give the impression of unwanted curves, or pigmentation flaws have to be smoothed out, using dodging and burning as would a darkroom printer. The color and the contrast are vital. Finnamore explains, “Most retouching is not the stretching and warping that is often assumed. It is more about lightening and darkening, cutting and pasting. Scanning is very interpretative, almost a constructive art in itself.”

Image © Dior/Photography by Nick Knight