Visual aids that help me when I'm retouching

Just so you know the images will be at the bottom, make sure to look at them =).

The photo is from Stéfan Bourson: http://www.sbourson.com/
Please go and check out his website.

My Visual Aid Layers
Hi everyone, today I’m going to share my visual aid layers so people can see what I use to help me when I’m retouching. There might be some you already know about and maybe some you haven't seen before.

Channel Mixer set to Monochrome

This is first of my visual aid layers, I use a channel mixer set to monochrome to see the skin blemishes on the photo. I normally set the reds to 140 but bring it up to about 120 after a little while you can choose your own settings but I would recommend somewhere between (150 - 120). This visual aid layer can also help with dodge and burning because you can better see what needs to be dodged and burned.

Solar Curve

You all have probably seen the solar curve before, but I use multiple different solar curves. If you look at the photo’s below you will see the differences, the solar curve shows all the imperfections that the image has. This is very useful to see everything if you are a perfectionist.I use this a lot to clean backgrounds, I use this to clean backgrounds because you can't normally see if the background needs cleaning especially when it is dark so this is very useful for that.

B&W
There are a number of different ways to make you image black and white. I sometimes use the black and white adjustment layer and set it to color and then create another one and set it to luminosity. But in the image below I just use a solid color adjustment set to saturation. I use this because it is easier on my eyes, I’m normally retouching in the dark but this is pretty much self-explanatory =).

Inverted
This visual aid I use rarely by itself, but it’s good to see the negative of the photo. A positive image is a normal image so how you would normally see an image.

Wiki - A negative image is a total inversion, in which light areas appear dark and vice versa.

B&W Inverted Solar Curve

This is something that is unique, I use a combination of the inverted adjustment, b&w adjustment and solar curves. I use a number of different radiuses to see more and more, I have been using this for a very long time because for one it’s easy on my eyes and I can see a lot of things that need cleaning on the image.

You can see the examples below of the different solar curves below:

Saturation/Color/Luminosity

Right the last of my visual aids, I use these to see the saturation, color, and luminosity of the image. Not much to say about these, they are very helpful.

Thank you, everyone, for reading and hopefully, you found this useful. There a lot of different ways to see an image this is just a few of them that I use. Please if you have any other visual aids share them below.