There are two flavours of pageant portraits: "natural" and "glitz". "Natural" doesn't allow makeup for small children and must look more, well, natural. "Glitz" picture must not only be retouched using most advanced techniques but have a look of an exquisit porcelain doll. In the pictures above you can see examples of the two kinds of pageant retouching.

Pageant photo retouching requires a good quality original image in high resolution. When I start my work, I pick the most serious problems in the original image: messed up hair, eyes not open wide enough, dark shadows on the face, etc. Fixing that requires both retouching and painting techniques. After that I do overall color and contrast correction, work on lashes, add blush, shapen brows, remove stray hairs. You can find more examples in my GALLERY.