Ten Tips to Become a Better Retoucher

When you are starting out in photography, establishing a retouching workflow is one of the best things you can do. This video provides 10 steps to become a better retoucher and gives a helpful order to take when editing your work.

Retouching is an overwhelming task for a beginner. A whole world of possibility is opened up to you, but you still need to develop the knowledge of when the appropriate time is to use a technique. What’s even more difficult is deciding what amount of editing to apply to an image, as every photographer tends to overdo things early on. The best thing you can do is find one adjustment at a time to focus on and master that. If you are a beginner, this video from Craig Beckta is perfect for you.

While several of the tips in this video are going to seem simple to the experienced retoucher, I appreciate how Beckta was able to provide his steps progressively so that you can identify quickly with where you are and what would be beneficial to learn next. His last two tips resonated with me as I remember them being breakthrough moments when discovering my retouching style. These two tips were darkening the background to cause your subject to stand out, and controlling the colors tones in your highlights and shadows separately. When I first saw someone darken the background while leaving the subject properly exposed, my eye for photography improved instantly. Finding your taste by experimenting with these skills are essential when you are trying to develop your specific style.

If you are relatively new to editing and want to see a good tutorial on basic retouching, take a look at the video above.