Quick photo retouching before and after: a woman in a colorful strapless outfit sitting on wire crates against a teal wall, the after showing moodier color grading.

Quick Photo Retouching for Beginners

THIS COURSE INCLUDES

  • 1 Lessonfollow-along
  • 59mof captioned HD video
  • Beginnerno experience needed
  • 11 Sample Images+ 2 brushes
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DESCRIPTION

In this Phlearn PRO Tutorial, you will learn the two most important things when it comes to quick photo retouching: the How and the When. Speed up your quick photo retouching workflow by gaining the knowledge and ability to decide exactly what your portrait images need.

What You’ll Learn

  • Reshape and smooth skin so it still looks natural
  • Correct color across shadows, mid-tones, and highlights
  • Sharpen the details that matter most

Table of Contents

Quick Photo Retouching for Beginners
  • 01 - Complete Portrait Retouching
    59:23m

Retouching in No Time.

Woman in a magenta gown seated against a teal studio wall
The same portrait after retouching and colour grading, with richer gown colour and smoother skin
AfterBefore

Quick Photo Retouching: Shape the Body

Make your subject look their best without looking unnatural using the liquify tool properly. Use what you learn to dramatically alter the shapes and tone a person bringing attention to the right places.

Skin Smoothing

Be sure to pay attention to the entire body. Most of the time it is not just the individual pores that need work, but the overall shapes. Learn how to smooth skin quickly and keep your subjects looking their best with quick photo retouching.

Color Correction

Remove the complexities from correcting colors in shadows, mid-tones and highlights. At times, highlights are too warm or too saturated and need to be treated separately from other areas of an image. Learn how to correct color in a quick photo retouching pass and restrict your changes to specific areas.

Sharpen the Details

Learn how to selectively sharpen different areas of the image to draw attention to where it’s needed. See exactly where and how to sharpen for the greatest impact in the least time.

Look Amazing In No Time – quick photo retouching for beginners
Featured Technique

Look Amazing In No Time

Make your subject look their best without looking unnatural.

Quick retouching – creating blurs

Create Blurs in Quick Photo Retouching

Use a creative blur to help draw attention to specific parts of your images. In this tutorial, you will learn the most important parts of using a blur and how to make it look as though it is a part of the original photo.

Custom Photoshop Brushes

Create your own Photoshop brushes so you’ll always have the right brush for the job. Custom brushes are excellent for quick photo retouching and adding special effects to your images.

Add Texture

Learn in detail how to use brushes to add incredible texture effects to your images. Plus, receive Phlearn PRO Custom Brushes with this tutorial that you can use on any image!

Plan Your Vision

Every Photoshop project should start by creating a plan of action. This is extra important for quick photo retouching, where every minute counts. See how to identify what to keep, what to get rid off, what to combine and what to enhance.

What Quick Photo Retouching Actually Means

Quick photo retouching is not about cutting corners, it is about knowing which corners matter. A portrait that needs a little Liquify, one pass of skin smoothing, and a color correction can be finished in minutes if you go straight to those three steps and stop. This tutorial trains that judgment: how to look at a photo, decide what it needs, and skip the rest without leaving anything important behind.

Aaron Nace, founder of PHLEARN

Class Instructor

Aaron Nace

PHLEARN Founder & Lead Instructor

Aaron Nace is a photographer, digital artist, and the founder of PHLEARN. He has been teaching Photoshop, Lightroom, and photography since 2011, and has taught at Adobe MAX for more than eight years.

Aaron publishes a free tutorial every week and a new in-depth PRO course every month.

  • 2M+YouTube subscribers
  • 160M+video views
  • 1,000+tutorials published
  • 15years teaching Photoshop

Reviews

  1. What? Liquify!?? I never knew that existed! Amazing class, thanks Aaron…

  2. I love it so much! I can`t believe I did all those changes! Thank you. Just one question, to create a new layer with all the work done I have tried to follow the instructions you give but I can´t, nothings happens, also to change the size of my brush, etc, nothing, 🙁 What can I do?

  3. These are the ones I like most! From the beginning to the end. The whole process! You rock!

  4. Great tutorial. Would recommend without any reservations.

  5. After buying my camera…. Phlearn is the best investment I made !

  6. Man… was that good ?.. hell YEAH ! 🙂 The only reason I’ve went with this tutorial instead of newer, longer ones was that of time. I had to enhance my skills even by smallest in the shortest time possible. This 1 hr tutorial is AWESOME I’m really happy that I’ve choose to watch it. Thank you PHLEARN

  7. (verified owner)

    Considering half way through it I was capable of this (I’ll actually finish the video and properly retouch later :P) I think I can say Phlearn is the BEST and I’m SOOO buying more of these tutorials they are great and you guys are amazing. Thank you so much! (I know I got distracted and didn’t finish it properly but I was so excited)

  8. Wow…. This has changed the way I work. I had my own way of working on things for along time. This has added to my bag of tricks and improved me as a photographer. Even part way though the tutorial I had to stop and try it on one of my own images.

  9. (verified owner)

    Aaron, what have you done to me?! You make me headache and you turned whole my world upside down!
    I have an easy life like truck technician and now I do everything to become photographer and retoucher! Because of You!
    Pop in to London for a nice, tasty paint of lager, as good as your tutorials! 🙂
    Thank you and whole you entire team 😉

    • Awww thanks so much Andrey! We’re so glad you’re learning and enjoying them!

  10. (verified owner)

    Aaron thanks so much for the tutorial! Question – why don’t you convert pictures to smart objects when you use filters? So if you mess it up you can always come back or undo them, instead of starting from scratch! I have done so to use the liquify tool and then you can stack different filters (or 2 liquify tools, for that matter), and change them or manipulate them independently.

  11. Cool tutorial as always! Thank you. Aaron can you share names of your favorite retouchers and PS masters? Very interesting who inspiring you and where you get all these ideas 😀

Master Photoshop, Lightroom and Photography

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