Photo Retouching Like A PRO 101

Retouching a photography can be a real challenge sometimes, and more often than not there is just one or two things you wish you knew how to do. You’re in luck I”m going to be doing a series of tutorials aimed at helping you accomplish these task in a painless way.

In this Photoshop tutorial we’re going to be looking at retouching a photo using mostly adjustment layers. Were going to make the model really pop and give her skin a nice healthy glow and some dynamic lighting. We will also address masking.

Our model is going to be supplied today by Photoshop Daily. There is a great selection of free stock material that they provide that really helps when you need a good image or if you are putting together a tutorial like this one. There also a lot of great tutorials on their website.

Step 1 Getting Started

Begin by opening the image in Photoshop and unlocking the background layer by holding down the “alt key” and double clicking the background layer. It should be renamed to “Layer 0″ automatically,  rename it “original”.

Using “cmd/ctrl+J” duplicate the “original” layer, and rename this new layer “base”. Lock the original layer and toggle off its visibility for now.

Roberto Blake-Photo Retouching 101- Base

Step 2 Smooth Model Skin

Duplicate the “base” layer again, and this time rename it “smooth”. Now you will want to zoom in on your image so you can see the face clearly. In the “Filters” menu, select “blur” then select “guassian blur” and set a value between 8 and 10.

Roberto Blake- Tutorial- Pro-Retouching-101-smooth1

Now that we have our “smooth” layer setup lets apply a layer mask to it, select the layer mask icon, (the third one from the left in the bottom of the layers panel) and hold down the alt key.

Select a soft brush with the layer mask selected, chose white as the foreground color, and begin painting in the areas of the skin you want to smooth, avoiding the lips, nose hair, eyes, and eyebrows.

Roberto Blake- Tutorial-Pro-Retouching-101-smooth2

Step 3 Dynamic Lighting

Duplicate your base layer again, and rename it “dynamic lighting”. Move the dynamic lighting layer above our smooth layer. Set the blend mode of the dynamic lighting layer to “overlay”, and then in the menu select adjustments, black and white, and then duplicate my settings. As you can see our model has a whole new look. Using dynamic lighting is a great way to add a whole new dimension to your images.

Roberto Blake- Tutorial- Pro-Retouching-101-base-dynamic-lighting

Step 4 Adjustment Layers: Levels

Many of you may be tempted to stop here, and if all you are interested in is smoothing your model’s skin then that would be fine. But we really want this picture to pop. Let’s say we want to use it for a magazine cover, or another editorial piece for example.

Select the “adjustment layer” icon (the fourth one from the left), and select “levels”. By using the settings I’ve provided you will see the picture really being to pop and have contrast.

Roberto Blake- Tutorial -Pro-Retouching-101-base-levels

Step 5 Adjustment Layers: Curves

Now we have a picture that really pops! But lets take it even further. We’ve added dynamic lighting to our model, given her smooth skin, but lets take things to yet another level by using the curves adjustment layer. Select the adjustment layer icon yet again and this time select curves adjustment.

Now in this instance feel free to experiment with the settings or try to come as close to mine as you can.

Roberto Blake- Tutorial-Pro-Retouching-101-curves

Your final end result should be something like this. In mine I added the extra step of a adjustment layer photo filter to “cool” the image down a bit, but you don’t have to.

Roberto Blake- Tutorial- Pro-Retouching-101-result