Two Hours of Beauty Retouching in One Minute
I absolutely infinitely and wholeheartedly love beauty photography and retouching. I especially love working with colleagues and clients who realize that retouching is a means to elevate an image, but it is not supposed to be fixing mistakes and shortcomings of the team.
It’s a skill, it’s art, it’s a powerful tool, and it takes many many years to master it. I am still learning with every single image and challenge that I am presented.
It all starts with a beautiful professional model, who not only takes a very good care of her skin and overall appearance, but also knows how to look into the camera, how to take my direction, how to turn her head to show her best angles. Not every professional model is necessarily a good beauty model, and I have so much love and respect for good beauty models.
They are our beautiful canvas, and my entire team paints the images we envisioned together.
Jenna of @omodelsagency, makeup & hair by the beauty masterElizabeth Ulloa, photography & retouching by Julia Kuzmenko 🔆
Nothing is more important in beauty photography than applying just the right amount of makeup on that canvas.
Then I add beautiful lighting and the magic happens right then.
Retouching at home is a long and beautiful process of taking an already stunning image and removing what the unforgiving camera captured, but our eye doesn’t usually catch in reality, and leaving the beauty that we saw back in the studio.
My retouching workflow always consists of a few main stages:
- Basic clean up with a healing brush and a clone stamp tool
- Dodging & Burning
- Details
- Colors.
I am always using our Retouching Academy Photoshop panels (Beauty Retouch & Pixel Juggler), they are an amazing tool that helps me save a ton of time. And I am their proud co-creator 😊
This lighting setup is from the Clean Beauty segment of my Go Pro: Studio Beauty video course for photographers (on my website).
Team credits:
Model Jenna of @omodelsagency
Makeup & hair by the beauty master Elizabeth Ulloa
Photography & retouching by me, Julia Kuzmenko 🔆
Jenna of @omodelsagency, makeup & hair by the beauty masterElizabeth Ulloa, photography & retouching by Julia Kuzmenko 🔆
Beauty Retouching Workflow Checklist
A free PDF checklist for those who strive to be a better Beauty Retoucher
What are your thoughts about the new tools in Photoshop this Oct 2020? On the surface they seemingly make retouching easier to more people. Do you see the new tools in Photoshop as a threat?