Interiors Retouching: Practical Demonstration

Being able to retouch interiors is a great skill and requires a good eye for detail. In this Photoshop class Karl shows you what to look out for when approaching an interior retouch and how creating symmetry can really transform your image.

This class also provides a visual comparison of some of the commonly used tools for interior retouching: Distort versus Perspective, Warp versus Liquify as well as Clone Stamp versus Healing Brush.

Working through each step, Karl explains his choice of tools and how they can be used to achieve a final, pleasing result. 

Download the work-along file

In this class:

  • Photoshop tutorial: How to retouch interior architecture images
  • Retouching tips for architecture images
  • How to correct perspective in Photoshop
  • Rulers and guides
  • How to use Transform tools for retouching interior architecture images
  • Photoshop Liquify tool

For more advanced retouching techniques for interior images, watch our Home Interior Retouch class, presented with professional retoucher Viktor Fejes.

You might also be interested in our Live Talk Show with professional architectural photographer Sean Conboy, who shared some useful advice for architectural photography.

If you have any questions about this course please post them in the comments section below ?

Comments

  1. Hi. I just signed up after catching a chance video on youtube. This was the first lesson I watched because I have been doing this type of work professionally for about five years now. I leaned a few refinement tricks for my workflow such as liquify and clear guides (I may start using more of them now I can clear them in one go!) I always used Skew rather than distort and I wondered if you could give any insight into the differences between the two and and why you choose distort over skew?

    Excellent start, cant wait to get onto the product photography as I have just landed a client for that with little experience in that field.

    Best wishes

    1. Hi Thanks for signing up and glad that you like what you see so far. ‘Distort’ allows you any directional skew from any corner, up down, left right, and in or out at any angle from each corner independently. ‘Skew’ doesn’t do that it only allows you strictly horizontal or vertical movements.

  2. Thank you for the quick reply! Sorry, I wasn’t clear. I’m not referring to the auto tone features in my question. The particular features in Lightroom I’m asking about here are those in the Transform panel, especially the “Guided” feature, which are directed at the same problems you are solving with Photoshop.

    I understand how to use perspective correction and tilt/shift lenses, but the problem I run into is keeping the camera laterally parallel. A spirit level won’t help you and I’ve never been able to completely compensate for it afterwards. I suppose a laser square to the image sensor mounted in the shoe and a mirror on the wall could do this but I’ve never seen a laser pointer like this and maybe there’s a good reason!

    1. Hi Ken, yes the LR transforms are OK, the one where you can draw the guide lines on and it corrects those lines to vertical can be useful but I rarely use LR as I always have other stuff to do in PS anyway. I’ve not tried the Auto features of Transform in LR though so I can’t comment on them but I do remember the vertical and horizontal corrections seemed to do more stretching/distortion than using PS. In PS there’s the Lens Correction filter which has a similar tool set to LR as well as the Camera Raw features of PS which probably have more. However I just do things the way I’m used to, and the edit transform layer commands were around long before LR or the others so I’ve just got used to using those. Also this video class is a couple of years old now so maybe time for a look at the other methods! I’ve also always found a spirit level or the viewfinder adequate for keeping the camera horizontal.

  3. Thank you. I had only scratched the surface of the techniques possible here. Two questions, please… One: when/how do you use the (automatic) corrections in Lightroom vs. those shown here? And, what techniques do you use on location to ensure that the image sensor plane is parallel to the far wall?

    1. Hi Ken, I never use the automatic corrections (or very rarely). In most cases the auto corrections simply try and make the darkest point of an image black and the brightest point white, but that’s often not how we want the contrast of an image displayed. It’s far better to make the decisions based on mood, judgement etc and you can learn this by following my classes starting with the simplest principles such as this – https://visualeducation.com/class/live-workshop-post-production-techniques/. In terms of avoiding converging angles the sensor plane must remain parallel to the vertical structures and only the height of the camera can change. This isn’t always feasible so instead we compromise a little or we use tilt and shift lenses or we shoot slightly wider knowing we will correct converging angles in post production.

  4. hi, how did you run a paint brush across the horizontal guide line to use it in the liquify adjustment ? thanks

    1. Hi Peter, on the latest version of Photoshop they now allow you to view guides in the liquify panel. Previously they didn’t, so what I used to do was create a new layer and paint my own ‘guide’ on that layer and then in Liquify you can show other layers which then would let me see my straight line.

  5. Thanks for that. I dared to do panoramas in interiors of a shop and now im in a bit of trouble. This tools help a lot. When you didn’t get it quite right in the Adaptative Wide Angle Filter. Cool Karl.

    1. Hi Pratik, yes but in the latest version of Photoshop CC they have now added guides in the liquify interface.

  6. Great interior exposure on the original capture in the first place. The use of the lady adds scale, style and class to reflect the decor and for her to actually hold the glass up to get window-light passing through it gives the whole scene a professional polish with such meticulous attention to detail ☺

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