This content is a tutorial demonstrating advanced Photoshop techniques for professional photo retouching, focusing on refining facial features and meticulously cleaning up hair to enhance an image's overall aesthetic and polish.
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now we're in photoshop
and first of all i would like to
make a few annotations to
show you what my thoughts are
on this image and what pairs
brief was so therefore i create a new layer
layer
empty layer and
take a bright color and a brush that is
set to 100 opacity and 100 flow
so i can paint in a few things that we
agreed on to be done
work on the shape of the head so
nudge it in that's a little more round
and pleasing and
same goes for
this line i want to
straighten a few of
these lines
and especially here
just to make it a little more round
and more smooth which will enhance
the image ever so slightly
and this beautiful lady has
a slightly big nose and therefore
um we're gonna like shrink it a little bit
bit
very gently and that should be
the liquify job and
when it comes to retouching there's a
few things that
i would like to point out that are
important in in my eyes that we
are going to tackle this is especially
the hair so there's a lot of crisscross
and flying hair
that don't add to the image and in this case
case
it's oh white i
thought i picked the green one uh
usually i don't mark these i'm doing
this by hard
but i just want to point out
for you as as you watch this image what
kind of hair
so that you get an idea about my
thinking process
and it's these single hairs here and the
dark hairs and all the hair
that goes in a different direction than the
these kind of hair we we need to see
throughout the process so if we take
this out
or if we leave it in just mark it with
the question mark
there's these single hairs and these
these ones that we're going to take out
this black one this bright white one
these these these these
these and we're gonna
clean up here i think just to make it
a little more fancy and
of course we are going to clean up the skin
and what you will see in the process
that there are a lot of things that
we will take care of we will fill in a few
few
uh eyebrows i think and we were gonna
smooth uh the hairline
so i think you get an idea what
i will possibly do is that
we will clean up and shrink
and now it's all marked up but as i said
i usually don't mark these things this
is just for illustration purposes
to show you the thinking process behind it
all right let's start with the liquefied
job and
from there we will continue with healing
and cloning
to make a new layer
we will just drag this layer here and
call it
lick liquify and
and we will work on the things that i
mentioned so first of all we increase the
the
size of the brush you can do it here or
you can just push
control and option and
move your pen of your tablet
to make the shape a little more round
okay i'm gonna zoom in now
to work on the lines that i just mentioned
just to make it a little smoother and
and this is nothing to to overthink too much
much
just go with your own preference
you can see me change the size of my
liquify brush that is
because i want to
tackle just the areas that i want to straighten
a lot of these things are personal preference
preference
or things by experience so don't feel
obligated to do
once you have done that for i don't know
a couple of
years you definitely know what to look
for and
what you want to take care of in an image
and in many cases clients do tell you
what they
want and what they oh
sometimes they start telling you what
they want when they see what you did
so it's good to ask the right questions
in advance when you
don't get a
proper brief and that is what i
encourage you to
speaking about what has to be done in
the image
so let's deal with the nose there are
many options and um
one that i happen to like pretty much
is this pucker tool
that's a great name so you can
increase the size of the brush just right
right
just to cover the nose and then
click once or twice and see
what it does now that i did
see that it also changed the eye so this is
is
possibly not what i want to do so i'm
going to go
two steps back and
do it manually we can try the
move left tool push left tool
to work on the nose and
maybe push it in a notch
a notch just a notch yes
all right is there anything more
that we need to deal with otherwise we can
can
we can always take this step again
and now we see what we changed
an image and i guess that's a pretty
good base to start
all right so next thing a new layer
call it red retouch and lock it
locking this layer saves
a lot of issues because
if you are working on a new layer and
at some point accidentally you move it
have fun finding out where and how it
sat in the image
so never do that lock it and you have one
one
less issue that's what i wanted to say
in your image
all right let's let's take a look and
let's zoom in
to check out the details
first i'm going to go to my healing brush
brush
and deal with
that texture
sample on a
and take out this hair so pushing out to sample
sample
through the image i like this
step of the process very much because
it's very meditative
and you can get used to the image you see
see
all the uh all the details that you
i i love to get lost in in an image and
let it talk to me and let it tell me
and i'm always jumping back and forth
so if if it's
more used to to work on a certain area
at a time
this is just my personal
so i want to take out these little hairs that
that
don't really add to the quality of the image
image
and since we are working on a on a magazine
magazine
on a magazine image which is going to be printed
printed
in a 4 size
or 30 centimeters
um then
it is not necessary to to deal with
every every every single data that you
would like
retouch on a on a key visual for example
key visual is a big campaign images that
can be used in billboards
or just big prints there
of course many more details are visible
and i'm going to take out
one of this brows that goes in the
different direction
and one of these this hair that
goes over the iris
and what one thing that i learned uh
when i started out in retouching is that
it's always good to work with a really
really really tiny brush
you have so much more control
and you don't need to use
force to go
and alter the image
and uh it makes you
like be more patient
and as i said it's a meditative process
do you like healing and cloning and
dodging and burning as much as i do
because i can do it like forever and
there have been times when i was
especially in in
high-end hair images where you get used to
to
get to know every hair by name
i can i can only encourage you to try that
that
and to get into it because hair
retouching is so much fun
it's also a pain in the ass but it's a
lot of fun
there's a little dryness here that we
oh and by the way um
i don't know about you but i love
listening to music or podcasts
while i retouch it's it's a great way to [Music]
[Music]
get knowledge or just some entertainment
and i created a few playlists on
spotify for me to
have some good tunes while retouching
and i made some of those lists public so
if you're interested in
finding out what i listen to when i retouch
retouch
you'll find some links in the
description of this video
and right now i am into the 90s skatepunk
skatepunk
playlist and i'm listening to the mayfly
of milling colin
if you know you know right so i'm a kid
of the 80s
and 90s skatepunk is
i don't know it it's there for me you know
know
all the time and i love love
90s skatepunk so much i'm still
listening to it
the joy of 90s skatepunk and he's also
enjoying it also
he's like six years old now and he
hasn't been in uh
around in this time but yeah
there's nothing better than
a really really good skate funk tune
but you can convince me that there's
something else
never mind if we take out too many of
those we can always
draw some more hair in
some maybe nicer falling hair so that
the skin i mean
like these darker spots maybe
some of those might be molds
not sure yet which one
i will keep
but since we're working on an empty
layer we can always bring them back
later if
just removing this bad texture and
replacing it with
i'm still working with the
healing brush
there's many ways to retouch hair
i'm going to show you a couple of
tools but it's
it's there's no one right way it always
depends on how much time and effort you
want to put in an image
so again there's a difference between
key visuals and
smaller prints and
you can always go the whole way
but sometimes and especially uh in in smaller
resolutions it doesn't
always or it's not always necessary
to to go through through all the struggle
struggle
because hair retouching can be a real pain
pain
and we're talking we're not talking
about real pain in this image there's
in all the projects i did for hanker for example
example
for some brands like schwarzkopf or cyrus
cyrus
and others there is uh
you won't you possibly won't believe what
what
is possible and is done
in in retouching but at some point
now i'm going to switch to the clone stamp
stamp
go to normal mode and maybe
30 30 opacity and 30 flow
lip highlight here
just cover it a bit so you don't always
have to take it out completely but you
see the before and after that's
that's good and this also goes for
darker patches you can dodge and burn
like
do whatever gets you to
switching back to
the healing brush but i'm going to go to
the spot healing brush now
which is a fantastic tool to
if you activate content aware as a type
and sample all layers and this
pen pressure you can like
it does a fantastic job in the newer
version of photoshop 2.
it hasn't always been like that but in
the new versions of photoshop it's a
fantastic tool to retouch hair
saves you a ton of time and
so but with this tool you can just paint over
i don't know why it's pennywise right
and when in doubt zoom out that's the
same as
for the finance world uh when you check
some chart patterns
when in doubt zoom out you see the full picture
picture
and see
yeah i think we're on a good way with
and you don't always have to take them
out completely sometimes
it just helps to dim them down
and again you have always the chance and
the option to
in the end it's all about being believable
i think it as you can see here the spot
heating brush
uh is doing a really smart job
it's a real pain to
i think i'm gonna do this one
this tiny one the blonde one here
manually with uh the clone stem tool
i'm not sure if uh
this one is going to cut it
just this one close them
there are a few more of those black ones
that i would like to get rid of since
and this one here
i remember a bad religion gig in
98 in munich
munich germany we were
we were there with my classmates and we
sneaked out of the
hostel that we stayed in to see punk rocky
rocky
and that was one of one of those
an unforgettable story going
sneaking out and making our way to the venue
venue
and somehow making it in and
see these amazing bands like
like wagon and
bad religion and satanic surface
i don't know if this if
well in this case i'm going to erase it
and go for another technique which is
the clone stamp tool with the darken mode
mode
so this is one of those techniques [Music]
[Music]
that is used for key visuals i think
pretty much
so if you want to spend more time on one hair
let's go up here there's something that
i want to go
look at this bright guy
and then i think by experience you will
see that clients and photographers
always say that don't do too much
but it's these things that are mandatory and
and
that are making a difference in the end
so i love to spend
on the skin just to make it
very natural and
so what do you listen to when you retouch
how about these guys here i think i'll
just take them out check
and maybe get them back in afterwards
i don't know no no no no
what hair clients many times
ask you to do is take out these
shiny single hairs
or sometimes they appear to be if it's
dyed hair they appear to be gray
so this is always something that you
either need to take out or that you need to
to colorize
of course a product issue if it's a hair product
product
and here we are with this i don't
i'm not sure yet so let's see i'm gonna
leave it for now
just some of those single hairs that
see the harder i push with my
pen the bigger the size
of the stroke gets that's because of the
if you wonder how i got used to working
with the
wacom tablet
and what's in the early beginnings of my
career in the creative industry i was
working in a tiny
but very excellent graphic design studio
and they had these very old wacom
tablets back in 2002 and
i was i was pretty amazed by
the idea of using a computer with a pen
i never did that before
and uh aside from like
uh like a like a palm
maybe you remember these palm computers
that had a pen
and so i bent the mouse for
almost three weeks and i never wanted to
touch the mouse anymore
it was such a natural feeling to work
with the wacom tablet
since we're not putting this model on a
new background
we can dim it away the hair
later we are going to do or maybe we do
like with low opacity and low flow we can
can
now i'm gonna leave this for now no
i don't know yet
do you know how
one can play spotify songs in
uh your videos or live streams
look at this one here didn't see that before
here's one of those that
let's try to tackle it with a low
i don't want to take it out i just want to
to
maybe also here use the pink
and here we can put some pink was it too much
that's fair it's fine
the regular healing brush
robin preston an awesome guy from london
uh who kept me under his wings
for a couple of a couple of years
actually to
teach me a lot about retouching uh robin
if you hear that
thank you for everything
he taught me about the brush
all right these dark spots we can also
dodge and burn them later
why i'm going to even out some of these
that also have color oh yeah and here
see with a small
only thing we have to go there
later to maybe draw in
one or two or a couple of hair
in photoshop
when i uh give workshops or insights
or keynotes on on retouching
i've been doing that a couple of times
with capture one or wacom
i like to point out that being a
photoshop professional is like being a ninja
ninja
not only because it sounds cool but also
since we
as researchers have done a good job when
see how i jumped from the oops
hair from the skin back to the hair
i'm sorry sorry not sorry
um as i told you earlier i'm
and that's not a recommendation it's
it's a preference or personal style
see how i'm taking out those that
forehead there were a few dark ones and
okay this part definitely needs
but let's make base before
that should be okay here's uh something
that i want to
take away oh i was cloning in darken mode
mode
that was a brave move through the skin
didn't do any damage
sometimes to get away with it
thinking about the eyebrows this one goes
goes
maybe take it out and paint some in
or is it should it be the
i'm doing slightly more than i would
probably usually
what steps can be necessary and done
changing the skin structure here
just eliminating this bigger pores
all right let's move
yeah does this one bother us
okay so let's see what we did with the retouching
is a step that we can
close this oh no there is a
small issue i think that's a step that
we can
close the healing and cloning
part with and move on
to dodging and burning
and but maybe before that
before we forget that in the end therefore
therefore
um i like to create
a hairline setup if you wonder what that is
is
this is the on-screen menu of my wacom
right now there's an um
there's a video in german language on my
youtube channel where you can
see me how i set that up
and but for now you can address
all sorts of actions and uh
adjustment layers and everything to it
so um i'm having my hairline set up which
which
creates two um two empty layers and
use and this time in this case i want to
have it for
inner hair and the brush
is 100 opacity 100 flow
pen pressure and uh
is it let's see
i thought it is pen pressure does it
show me what it is
like this button here and a smoothing of
20 that is very important here
since uh we want to paint
a few hair single hairs
maybe one pixel is too small
don't worry about the hair yet
we will tweak it ever so slightly when
we get there
maybe this brighter color
close some gaps here
yeah like that or here
all right so now this hairline looks a
bit more clean
and um one thing we need to do now
is to make two copies by pushing command j
j
two times keep one of them
the other two we will merge uh just
activate both layers and push
command e now they are a little
thicker and
the sharpness so we will blur them according to the hair yeah that's a
according to the hair yeah that's a little too much
little too much to the surrounding hair maybe like like
to the surrounding hair maybe like like so
yeah and now by pushing command and the layer you
and the layer you and then pushing this little mask button
and then pushing this little mask button here
here you create a mask
you create a mask which makes it much more natural
which makes it much more natural and then you can work with the density
and then you can work with the density to bring
to bring some of this back so if you
some of this back so if you look at the hair now this is the painted
look at the hair now this is the painted hair
yes and now we can apply the layer mask so
we have some new hair which looks pretty believable i think
and of course you can do the same thing on the outside
on the outside all right so next step
all right so next step would be dodging burn
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