Video Tutorials

Hair Volume, Skin Highlights, and the Liquify Trick I Wish I'd Known Earlier
Video Tutorials

Hair Volume, Skin Highlights, and the Liquify Trick I Wish I'd Known Earlier

There’s a specific kind of client portrait that used to trip me up constantly: the studio shot where the hair falls flat, the lighting creates shadows that feel muddy instead of dramatic, and the overall image just needs a lift without looking like it’s been through a filter factory. For years, I’d either over-edit my way out of the problem or leave too much on the table. What I needed was a cleaner workflow that addressed these issues in the right order, with the right tools.

Contour With Light: Using Dodge & Burn in Lightroom to Shape a Portrait Like a Makeup Artist
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Contour With Light: Using Dodge & Burn in Lightroom to Shape a Portrait Like a Makeup Artist

There is a specific kind of client feedback that stays with you. Early in my retouching career, someone described my skin edits as “plastic-looking,” and I spent the next several months trying to figure out exactly what I had done wrong. The answer, it turned out, was that I had been treating exposure as a global problem. I would lift or lower the whole image and call it a day. What I was missing was the understanding that light shapes a face the same way a makeup artist does, and that Lightroom’s adjustment brush gives us the precision to do that shaping ourselves, one brushstroke at a time.

When the Sky Does the Work: Lessons from a Burnt-Out Photographer That Every Retoucher Needs to Hear
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When the Sky Does the Work: Lessons from a Burnt-Out Photographer That Every Retoucher Needs to Hear

There’s a particular kind of tired that photographers know well. Not the good tired you feel after a long shoot where everything clicked. The other kind - the one where you’re staring at a Lightroom catalog at midnight and wondering why you started doing this at all. I ran headlong into that wall after my third consecutive 60-hour wedding weekend, and it was the moment I finally understood that how you approach a shoot changes everything that happens afterward in post.

What a Misfired Studio Light Taught Me About High Fashion Retouching
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What a Misfired Studio Light Taught Me About High Fashion Retouching

There’s a specific kind of panic that hits on set when something goes wrong and everyone looks to you for the answer. I know it well from my wedding days, and apparently so does Aaron Nace. In this PHLEARN high fashion retouching tutorial, Watch the full tutorial on YouTube — Aaron opens with the story of a shoot that started falling apart before a single keeper frame was captured. The model bumped her head, the original setup was scrapped, and what followed was a scramble into an adjacent room with a bare bulb strobe and absolutely no plan.

How to Shoot Natural Light Beauty Portraits with a 50mm 1.2 (And Why Your Settings Matter More Than Your Studio)
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How to Shoot Natural Light Beauty Portraits with a 50mm 1.2 (And Why Your Settings Matter More Than Your Studio)

Beauty photography has a way of exposing every weak decision you made on set. I learned that early on, back when I was still shooting weddings and occasionally taking on “quick” headshot sessions on the side. If the light was muddy, if the focus landed on the wrong plane, if the angle flattened the face — no amount of time in Photoshop was going to save me. The cleanup always starts with the capture.

Frequency Separation for Portrait Skin: A Step-by-Step Breakdown of Jessica Kobeissi's Retouching Method
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Frequency Separation for Portrait Skin: A Step-by-Step Breakdown of Jessica Kobeissi's Retouching Method

Early in my retouching career, a client told me my edits looked “plastic.” She wasn’t wrong. I had been smoothing everything, flattening pores, obliterating the tiny imperfections that make a face look like a face. It took a long time, a lot of ruined portraits, and eventually a deep dive into frequency separation to understand that good skin retouching is about evening tone and preserving texture, not erasing humanity. That shift in thinking changed everything about how I work.

Halloween Skin Textures in Photoshop: How to Turn a Phone Photo Into a Creature Effect
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Halloween Skin Textures in Photoshop: How to Turn a Phone Photo Into a Creature Effect

There’s a particular kind of creative paralysis that hits when a client asks for something outside your usual workflow. I’ve been retouching beauty portraits long enough that smooth skin, even tone, and light sculpting feel automatic. But “make him look like a creature” is a different assignment entirely. That’s why I keep a folder of tutorials that push me outside the clean, polished world of beauty work, and this Halloween-themed episode from KelbyOne landed in that folder immediately.

Retouching a Dramatic Male Headshot: A Working Photographer's Breakdown of Aaron Nace's Photoshop Method
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Retouching a Dramatic Male Headshot: A Working Photographer's Breakdown of Aaron Nace's Photoshop Method

Male portrait retouching has its own specific logic, and for a long time I got it wrong. I’d apply the same approach I used on beauty editorial work and wind up with headshots that looked polished in a way that felt off. Skin too smooth, texture too even, the whole thing reading as slightly artificial. It took a few uncomfortable client conversations before I understood that retouching a man’s face is less about refinement and more about editing with restraint, knowing what to remove and what to leave alone.

How to Color Grade a Beauty Portrait in Photoshop: A Walkthrough of Jessica Kobeissi's Layered Approach
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How to Color Grade a Beauty Portrait in Photoshop: A Walkthrough of Jessica Kobeissi's Layered Approach

Color grading is the part of my retouching workflow that took the longest to stop feeling like guesswork. Skin retouching has rules you can learn and repeat. Color, though, feels more like cooking without a recipe until you build enough intuition to understand why certain combinations work. For a long time, my grades looked either flat or overdone, and I could not articulate why. What changed things was watching professionals who narrate their thinking, not just their mouse clicks.

Split, Slice, and Separate: Inside Photoshop's 3D Extrusion Technique (Plus Why Frequency Separation Changed My Retouching Forever)
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Split, Slice, and Separate: Inside Photoshop's 3D Extrusion Technique (Plus Why Frequency Separation Changed My Retouching Forever)

There is a specific kind of client feedback that lives rent-free in your head for years. Mine came early in my retouching career, when someone looked at a portrait I had spent two hours on and said the skin looked “plastic.” They were right. I had been smoothing and blurring with no real system, no understanding of what made skin look like skin rather than a vinyl mask. That moment sent me on a long search for techniques that held up under scrutiny, and frequency separation became the answer I kept coming back to.

Smooth Skin Without the Plastic Look: A Simple Portrait Retouch Walkthrough
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Smooth Skin Without the Plastic Look: A Simple Portrait Retouch Walkthrough

There’s a specific kind of client email I dread. It goes something like: “The skin looks a little… airbrushed?” That word, airbrushed, is the polite version of what they actually mean. I learned this the hard way early in my retouching career, back when I thought cranking up a Gaussian Blur and calling it done was a legitimate skin-smoothing strategy. It took me a long time to find techniques that actually hold up, ones that soften without erasing the person underneath.

Ring Light Beauty Portraits: What Jessica Kobeissi's Shoot Teaches Us About Light, Lenses, and Letting Go of Perfect Conditions
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Ring Light Beauty Portraits: What Jessica Kobeissi's Shoot Teaches Us About Light, Lenses, and Letting Go of Perfect Conditions

There’s a version of beauty photography that demands a full studio, a rack of modifiers, and an assistant who knows exactly what a “scrim” is. And then there’s the version most of us actually work in: a spare room, a single continuous light source, and a subject who’s ready to shoot right now. I spent years thinking the first version was the only legitimate one. It took watching working photographers like Jessica Kobeissi set up a gorgeous beauty shoot with a single ring light in what looks like a home living room to shake that belief loose.