Beauty Retouch (Part 1)

In this Photoshop class, where Karl is joined by professional retoucher Viktor Fejes, we look at the initial RAW processing of an image file before commencing further work in Photoshop.

Here, Viktor explains the techniques required for skin retouching and the reasoning behind his retouching process. The pair also explore concepts such as color profiles, visual aid layers and how to optimize your workflow.

Using his visual aid layers (which you can download here), Viktor uses tools such as the Clone Stamp, Healing Brush tool and Burn and Dodge as he clearly demonstrates the initial phases of how to retouch a beauty image. In just a few steps the difference is clearly visible and you’ll be amazed at how effective and versatile just these simple techniques can be.

In this Photoshop class we cover the following:

  • How to retouch a beauty image
  • How to retouch skin
  • Using Visual Aid Layers to retouch skin
  • Color profiles: Adobe RGB, sRGB, ProPhoto
  • How to fix skin blemishes using the Clone Stamp tool
  • How to use Burn and Dodge to retouch skin
  • How to optimize your retouching workflow

If you have any questions about this class, please post in the comment section below ?

Comments

  1. Hi Karl,

    In this video, the RAW development is done in Camera Raw. Can the same workflow be done in Lightroom as well? If yes, at what point in the process would you do the RAW adjustments ?

    Thank you,
    Lorenzo

    1. Hi Lorenzo, it really depends on how you are capturing the RAW image files to begin with. For example if you are shooting tethered your raw files will be going directly into your shooting software such as Capture One or Phocus, etc etc. You would then work on your RAW files there and process them to get the best colour, contrast, exposure etc and then likely convert them to a PSD or Tiff for continued work in Photoshop or Lightroom. For your information the RAW engine in PS and LR is the same. Generally speaking your RAW files should be converted into 16bit PSDs or Tiffs which are relatively similar to a RAW file in latitude. Based on some of your questions I think you should also watch these blocks of classes before you go into the Advanced Photoshop stuff or you risk missing some vital bits of information:
      https://visualeducation.com/section/photoshop-tools-and-techniques/
      https://visualeducation.com/section/photoshop-for-photographers/

    1. Hi, I think you would need to contact Viktor directly at Gild Studios to ask him that. All I can say is that the commonly used method of Frequency Separation is often considered my many top retouchers to be too destructive to the pixels and my preferred method is a frequency separation by another method using the ‘apply image’ command which I demonstrate in this class: https://visualeducation.com/class/retouching-clothes-removing-creases/

  3. desavoiecorp@gmail.com

    What Viktor says on 15min 18s is very important it’s his way to work but unfortunately I didn’t quite understood what he meant, would you mind summarizing this again please?

    1. Hi, I think what he is saying is that you could run the layer as a ‘smart object’ so that it can link directly back to the RAW interface as a RAW file if you needed to make further RAW adjustments but he feels that this method is too restricting with other things he wanted to do to the layer later such as more specific healing/cloning. That’s what I understood from what he was saying. I’m also in the same mindset in that I like to keep my retouch work as simple as possible because you can end up with so many layers for B&D and healing etc etc that you will notice in my retouch workflows as soon as I’m sure I’ve got something done and I don’t need to edit that part further then I will flatten layers down and move on as this keeps things condensed and it makes the workflow quicker.

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