While i have been retouching my own photographs for many years now, there are some alignments that have taken place and have presented the opportunity for me to take some great courses by Pratik Naik – ‘The Retouching Series‘ to learn from the masters on the retouching front.

So there’s a couple of things that i have come across during this quest, such as quite a few photographers absolutely hate retouching. While its strangely enough one of my favourite parts of processing the image and giving it the final touch.

Also i find that there is an unfortunate stigmatism to retouching being the crutch to bad photography, i truly feel retouching is about enhancing a great image. Even the top industry photographers use professional retouchers to ready an image for publication. Because sometimes blemishes just cannot be concealed, and other times there is just one step missing to enable you image to go over the envelope and create that wow factor for the audience.

Personally as a retoucher there is usually a game plan through the whole shoot, so i keep my capabilities in mind and how i can use them to make the best end result with time constraints given.

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Skin clearing & overall toning preview  (Click & drag for preview)

Currently i am focusing on creating good clean skin complexion, while keeping the face looking as natural as possible. While i have only made it through the first main course which is over three hours broken up into little segments on the basic properties. I would say it certainly has helped me speed up my productivity which is super handy when retouching client work.

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Skin clearing with colour correction preview. (Click & drag for preview)

As seen in my click & slide over retouching previews, on very simple setups for portraiture. You will be able to see me focusing on the skin toning & blemish removal. Not changing the original face structure too much as i feel it is important to keep the subject looking close to their natural form as possible. This might sound strange to some but it is quite easy to change the form of facial structure when evening skin tones.

If you have any questions on my current approach to retouching you are more than welcome to pop me a question in the comments below. There is quite a variety of topics i can touch on the retouching front, so this blog post is really about opening the discussion where i aim to write more about this topic. There is so much to unravel with Retouching and i am pretty excited to learn more.