For the most part I do all of my own retouching and in this article I will walk you through a simplified version of my workflow to show you how I go about the editing process from RAW file processing to retouching.

Retouching is a very personal experience and it is the last step in finalizing your work. We all do it a bit different and it all depends on the subject, client, intended use and the scope of the project. A lot of my images are images of people either for commercial use or private portrait commissions without a lot of heavy manipulation or compositing. I have a pretty clear-cut goal in mind based on the final use of each image. On a commercial beauty image I may spend upwards of 7 hours editing an image, but on a portrait where the output size is considerably smaller, I can generally retouch a print ready image in less than 30 minutes.

But not matter the use no image is the same that is to say that no person’s skin, teeth, eyes or hair is identical. Because of this each image has to be handled on an individual basis.

Once my client or myself has made image selections I go through the image processing steps within Capture One Pro with the goal of a nicely exposed image. I don’t do any type of effects at this point, I just aim for a perfect exposure using the histogram, levels and dynamic range sliders. I reserve all other effects for Photoshop.

 TIP: Even images that I pre-visualized and shot to be black and white I process in color. I feel like Photoshop tools are much better with converting color files to black and white.

Once the images are processed I can begin the first round of basic retouching. This is a “cleaning up” phase. I go for large blemishes, scrapes, scars, etc. Photoshop has made amazing strides in retouching capabilities (if you are like me content aware not only sped up your workflow but also scared you a bit) and I use these tools because they are quick and precise. I use the healing brush tool and the patch tool for any type of actual blemish removal and NOT the stamp tool. I try to only use the stamp tool to blend uneven skin tones and not for blemish removal. I will elaborate in the next step.

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You can see the small details here that I focus on. I also try not to zoom in past 100% because I tend to do work that no human will ever see.

Having gone throught the main clean up stage, I start any lightening under the eyes or evening out skin tones. This is where the clone stamp tool comes into play. I use it at a low opacity of about 12-14 and blend gradually until I feel it looks ok. Sometimes when I finish I feel like I have gone to far I use the History Tool to back it off a bit from areas that I feel I over-blended.

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Most of this is trial and error and you find yourself making a move them undoing it. This is ok and is part of the process.
It takes seeing the effects sometimes before you can tell if you like it.

At this point I usually work on the eyes lips and teeth. This is a sensitive part of the image. Because you want people to look at your subject’s eyes if you overdo this it can be very noticeable. This particular image didn’t really need much done but generally this would require slight lightening of the whites of the eyes and brightening and saturation boost of the iris.

 The next step is the background and fly away hairs. Again the healing tool and patch tool work the best here while the stamp tool sometimes has to save the day. Hair can be hard but with some of the new tools at our disposal but ultimately it is one of those things where you have to decide how much time you are willing to spend. This image could eat up a lot of time because the subject has some backlighting that is really making the hair pop. In the video I demonstrate on one section how I would retouch it if I wanted all of the strays gone but I would rarely take out all of them on a portrait shoot.

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You can see how I am using multiple tools to “hide” my retouching.
The clone stamp can leave streaks but the patch tool can be used to even them out.

From this point I would put any effects on it that give it a look I was after. I usually like to add some tonal contrast to everything but the skin. I am a sucker for texture and love the way the Nik Effects filters can bring that out and at the same time allow me to use subtractive points to mask out the skin.

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You can see that the subtraction points allow me to mask off her skin tone because the tonal contrast has unflattering effects on the skin
(unless you are going for the dramatic) in which case, go to town.

That is it. Save. Rinse. Repeat.

© Wes Kroninger

As always I welcome questions and comments at info@weskroninger.com. This is the first retouching article I have done and would love your feedback. Let me know if there are areas where you struggle or if there was anything I may have glossed over that you would like to see. Your feedback helps us to cater these articles to you.