“However one chooses to look at it, everything from dust removal and colour correction to elongating limbs and exaggerating cheekbones and body parts does constitute retouching. It’s a murky, complex business, carried out at best by people with heightened aesthetic sensibilities and great expertise, and at worst by heavy-handed individuals prepared, for instance, to take an unwanted party out of a picture entirely. Perhaps the most notorious example of this was Stalin’s removal of political rivals – in particular Trotsky – from photos for propaganda purposes. Indeed, it’s the unscrupulous amateurs and propagandists who give the profession a bad name and cause us to be suspicious of what is, in capable hands, a subtle art form. Small wonder that the world of the retoucher usually stays under wraps.”
— From here 1 month ago