High-quality retouching, particularly in beauty photography, requires a deeper understanding of the key principles, tools, and techniques—far beyond basic, less-refined photo editing and quick-fix solutions.
The goal of this course is to help you develop professional retouching skills that meet industry standards and allow you to qualify for senior in-house retouching roles, creative agency and brand opportunities, or remote freelance work for commercial clients from anywhere in the world.
Who Is This Course For?
Photographers and retouchers who are already familiar with Adobe Photoshop and basic retouching and are interested in mastering professional retouching for beauty, fashion, and portrait photography.
Course Purpose and Promise
High-quality skin and hair retouching is the key post-production skill required in any genre of professional photography that involves images of people, such as portraits, fashion, and especially beauty.
This course offers an even wider range of lessons that go beyond technical beauty retouching skills. We cover different areas of expertise expected from a retouching professional, from file handling to business etiquette, file structure, and, of course, the most commonly used professional techniques.
Additionally, we will walk you through a couple of full retouches from start to finish, demonstrating varying goals that call for different workflows.
This course will also help self-taught retouchers learn the proper methods and workflows and correct any bad habits they may have picked up by learning from other self-taught retouchers.
While we touch on fundamental subjects like Curves, Selections, and Masking, we focus on how these tools and techniques are applied in a professional environment.
In this course, we bring decades of distilled combined industry experience and share our refined beauty retouching workflows. We teach manageable and repeatable methods that are easy to understand and implement in various retouching situations.
What Is Included
Immediately after your purchase, you will have access to the streaming videos and downloadable materials in your Course Library (login details provided in an automated email):
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Skill Level: Intermediate to Advanced
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Format: Streaming
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Access: Lifetime
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Duration: Over 5 hours
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Practice Files: 3 beauty images
Course Outline and Topics
Our goal is to help you improve and advance your beauty retouching skills, teach you the methods used by retouching professionals, correct any bad retouching habits you may have picked up on the internet, and equip you with the knowledge and expertise you need to pursue work with commercial clients or land senior retoucher roles—remote or in-house.
Sample Lesson View
Module 1: Starting Out and Organization
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Starting as a retouching professional
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Handling work files
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Processing raw files
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Structuring your PSD files like a pro
Module 2: Mastering Curves and Dodge and Burn
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Mastering Curves
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Mastering Dodge & Burn
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Natural beauty retouching for female portraits (from start to finish)
Module 3: Professional Selections and Masking
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Professional Selection & Masking methods
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Advanced Masking methods
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Luminosity Selection & Masking
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Precise masking with Select & Mask
Module 4: Working with Colors
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Color theory and management in practice
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Re-coloring methods
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Backgrounds and banding
Module 5: Frequency Separation and More
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Pro use of the frequency separation technique
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Drawing in hair, lashes & brows
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Working with Smart Objects
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Full natural beauty retouch for studio beauty (from start to finish)
Comes packed with valuable materials, practice beauty images, pro insights, tips, and guidance to accelerate your learning progress:
🎁 Bonus Materials
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RA Lash, Brow, and Hair custom brushes
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Retouching Job Application Checklist
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Pro Retouching Vocabulary
The State of the Industry
In recent years, brands of all sizes have increasingly opted to outsource content creation, including photography, retouching, and color matching. These commercial clients rely on skilled creative professionals with efficient tools and the shortest turnaround times to produce high-quality promotional materials.
Many skilled retouchers compete in the overcrowded bottom of the market, where quality demands and rates remain low—especially with the rise of AI tools and editing platforms.
However, highly skilled professionals who can handle commercial post-production as freelancers or internally, managing outsourced creatives, will remain in high demand.
After completing this course, you will have the knowledge and skills to produce retouching work that meets commercial client standards (e.g., beauty, lifestyle, and other brands).
This skill set opens doors to commercial work, whether you’re a photographer who also offers retouching services, a retoucher seeking senior in-house or remote positions, or a creative professional interested in agency or brand positions to manage post-production projects, interfacing with photographers and retouchers on behalf of the client.
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