Professional Photographic Retouching Tutorial (40Mins, Start-To-Finish)ListThumbs

Professional Photographic Retouching Tutorial (40Mins, Start-To-Finish)

January 20, 2009

This is the second tutorial in a series on photographic retouching. The first part was all about evening skin tonal values and removing blemishes. In this part I will take you through everything else. So, as a result it's a long video (40 Mins).

Originally written for www.whiteinkblog.com .In this tutorial I will complete a professional photographic retouching from start to finish. Before watching please note that there is a lot of information in this video to absorb, so watch and re-watch areas that you find more advanced. This is a 40 minute video, I'd recommend pausing it at regular intervals before continuing so that you fully understand all the processes. Some of the areas covered in this video are:

If you do not have time right now to watch the 40 minute tutorial, I'd suggest you watch this video, it goes through what we will be doing in a summarised version as I am aware the lenght of the video is quite long.

– Colour Correction
– Reshaping Features (Figure, Eyes, Lips, Cheeks, etc)
– Adjusting tonal values
– Grading the image
– Simulating a Realistic Depth of Field Simulation
– Selective Enhancement of areas

There are a lot of sub-techniques and sub-processes that go into each of the above, so if you've got a question leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer.

Ok, I have included two versions here, both are the same video except the second one is higher res, suitable for fullscreen.

Standard Res.

Images of the final piece

Full Body Before / After

Face Before / After

Hip Before

Hip After

Full Body After

Application Used: Photoshop CS3

Thanks for watching guys, I hope it was helpful and insightful. As always if you've got any questions ask, I'll do my bet to answer. Just one other thing, if you enjoyed this could you check out my new Blog, http://www.whiteinkblog.com you can access it by clicking that link or the banner under the "About the author" text below. It's a new blog so we're just starting but I am serious about it and I'd like you guys to be there with from from the start.

Youssef Sarhan,
http://www.whiteinkblog.com
Share the knowledge.
(Originally posted on WHITENK Blog)

About the author

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My name is Youssef Sarhan and I am a Graphic Design student at The National College of Art & Design, Ireland. I co-founded WhiteInk with my friend Tim Phelan; which we occasionally write on. I also talk about and give tutorials on motion design at Keyframe Kid. Have a read of either to learn more about who I am and what I do.

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45 Comments

Youssef Sarhan01/20/2009

If anyone has any comments or questions. I'll do my best to answer them!

iArts01/20/2009

I didn't watch the video yet,but whatever is in there,you've already did an amazing job...

If you do something,than do it good...

Blackie01/20/2009

Wow, I'd like to see more of them! it looks pretty cool!

blacker design01/20/2009

check out the vid later on today, dont really have 40min to spare at the moment! But thanks

poGDI01/20/2009

Great this is what I want!

Thanks for this one! Will check it out when I come home!

Thanks!

muchogusto01/20/2009

i like most the "before" than the "after"..she looks like frozen..

ivanS01/20/2009

Congratulations! Excellent work!

Horea Nigust01/20/2009

Could you add tutorial as Pdf file ?

Excellent tech. good job

gideon01/20/2009

Well done! Definitely some useful techniques in here.

G

Youssef Sarhan01/20/2009

@Horea Nigust

Hey, PDF file? of what?

Horea Nigust01/20/2009

@youssef

dude so sorry... i hadn't watched the tutorial but it was totally obvious ....i thought it was like non-speaking tutorials

good job again :)

Mark01/21/2009

Amazing job on this tutorial. Some basic techniques used but definitely some good information here.

Can't wait to see more just like it.
http://www.knrdesigns.com

more01/22/2009

hey,

this tutorial is great. and don't bother because of the 40mins,
it's perfect you can see all steps made. exactly this is what
most tutials miss.

thanks a lot, and hopefully we see some more of your work
in such length.

james Mason01/22/2009

really nice tut, tho its a shame getting it right in-camera doesn't seem as important anymore

Youssef Sarhan01/22/2009

@James Mason

It's interesting you said that, I remember mentioning that in the video. That this sort of work, where u change the photo to suit your needs is something that is crucial to commercial photography, but perhaps journalistic/art photography I would be less inclided. In saying that art shouldn't be limited by saying you cant do this to your photos.

As you can you, this is a huge area of discussion so I opted to leave this out of the video as it may only cause debate which would distract from the point of the tutorial.

Thanks for the point of view! :)

Ric01/22/2009

Hey Youssef,

Great tutorial. I've been trying to hone in on my re-touching skills and you've helped develop them.

Something i've always been curious about though is re-touching on photos of males. I see so many tutorials for re-touching female photos, but it seems to be a little more difficult for me to re-touch male photos. To get that real polished look whilst maintaing that slight rugged look. Deeper skin pores and stubble etc.

Would love to see/hear your thoughts or suggestions on that.

Cheers! :)

Youssef Sarhan01/23/2009

@Ric

As a matter of fact, I think thats a good suggestion. I'll see what I can come up with. ;) keep an eye out on my blog, i might, if I can do a post this weekend.

http://www.whiteinkblog.com

Thanks

Stacey01/23/2009

It's really beneficial to know how to use adjustment layers for non-destructive editing if you're going to be retouching, it'd be nice to see a tutorial using that method on here. Duplicating layers is a way to lose information accidentally but if you use adjustment layers everything is masked and very easily editable.

Hope that helps. :)

cristina01/26/2009

great tutorial! thank you very much!

roeltheman01/29/2009

nice! thanks!

Jonas Borneland Hansen02/03/2009

super tutorial! (: thanks

name02/09/2009

hey, thanks for your work.
but the Video Standard Res is not found.

Robert02/15/2009

great tutorial

But the high resolution vid isn`t available any more. Can you fix the second vid? In the first vid I can`t read anything^^

mina02/17/2009

great tutorial.i like your approach.
do you have any suggestions how i can synchronize color and saturation on different photographs of the same person. i made about 30 nude photos in the studio,same light and everything but as the model changed the poses the skin is slightly different in tone. thanks

David02/17/2009

This is probably the most straight forward and useful touch-up tutorial I've seen yet.

Interesting how you made the harsh lighting of that shot work for you. I expected shadow dodging and softening. I'm glad you didn't bother.

No 50% gray layers or skin softening... excellent work.

If I had to see one more bad HDR / Dragan Effect tut with the high pass of death white halo I think I'd have plucked my eyes out.

The Skype call got a chuckle out of me. Thanks!

David02/17/2009

This is probably the most straight forward and useful touch-up tutorial I've seen yet.

Interesting how you made the harsh lighting of that shot work for you. I expected shadow dodging and softening. I'm glad you didn't bother.

No 50% gray layers or skin softening... excellent work.

If I had to see one more bad HDR / Dragan Effect tut with the high pass of death white halo I think I'd have plucked my eyes out.

The Skype call got a chuckle out of me. Thanks!

David02/17/2009

Mina,

You could set up a preset in Camera Raw - or if for some reason you can't use Camera RAW and you need a quick fix Photoshop has a Match Color feature under Adjustments that works wonders for same-light shots. Just my suggestion, Youssef might have a better one.

Youssef Sarhan02/21/2009

Thanks for responding to Mina, and i'm gld you liked the tut

Jim02/21/2009

Please, please offer your tutorials as Podcasts!

Olay02/22/2009

I liked your work very much. It improves the pic a lot! Even though it might not need it, thank you very much for show some tricks. I found it amazing. Could you please show me how to create a black and white image out of the pic so that it looks like a painting? I am not sure how to explain better. But smth that has white background and a black or greay image. There are not many features, but you can recognize the person. YOu know?
Thank you!

Youssef Sarhan02/23/2009

@jim, Perhaps sometime I will.

@olay, I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean?

vqquoa02/26/2009

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goodie03/02/2009

Mashaallah yousuf!! :D .. u made visitor light up and happy :D.. can u made actions scripts or pdf? coz i have limited connection:( so..i cant watch.. thanks you and i appreciated. waiting forward

LenoOsh03/14/2009

Video is no longer available =) Would you please upload it again?

photo restoration retouching03/19/2009

a handy and clear website for all sorts of photographic tips

Business Card Printing04/03/2009

Can't really watch that a long a video at the moment. Will have to make sure to check it out later though. Looks like another great tutorial to try out. Thanks for sharing this!

Gaby04/27/2009

Great tutorial! I learnt some tricks that might come in handy. Thank you so much.
The blog is also nice.

I was wondering though, do you know how to make photos look more glossy?

tiltshift04/29/2009

AMAZING job. Just two things. When you fast forwarded, during the re-saturation of the swimsuit, what were the two layers which were added to your pallet, and also, why did you turn it into a JPEG before making the final changes?

Nh0cTyler05/08/2009

why don't you give me the link to download this video?

retouching 06/09/2009

Useful tutorial! Thanks!!!

tvisuals06/09/2009

nice video.... nothing to crazy, but it is professional

Imran08/13/2009

Awesome!! :)

Jason!08/22/2009

Beautiful work!

Laylson09/01/2009

Oh Man, Great tutorial! Very useful, thanks for sharing!

more4joy11/12/2009

I haven't seen your tutorial on vimeo yet, but i would like to do a comment on the picture with photos 'before' and 'after'... the job you've done with one of the ears... man, it is sick !!! they ( i can't see the other one, unfortunately :) ) are not that BIG to be 'photoshoped'. don't you think so?

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