Retouch your shots
All digital images need some level of retouching applied to them, but thankfully it needn’t take long once you know what you’re doing
1
THE CLEAN-UP
The first thing to do is to clean up any distracting elements. Remove any blemishes or anything else that looks out of place. I like to create a new duplicate layer and rename it ’Skin’ to work on.
2
ADD DEPTH
In Layer>new>Layer choose Soft Light in the Mode menu and tick the box that says ‘Fill with Soft-Light-neutral colour (50% gray)’. now you can paint white and black to dodge and burn respectively.
3
DARKEN HIGHLIGHTS
create a curves layer, ensure the mask is selected and go to Image>Apply Image. check the layer is set to Merged and Invert is unticked. now we can pull the curve down and darken the image.
4
SHARPEN DETAIL
With your top layer selected hit cmd+Alt+Shift+e. next hit cmd+Shift+u on the new layer and then go to Filter>Other>High Pass. choose a pixel radius of between 5-10 and then hit OK. change the layer blend mode to Soft Light and adjust the layer opacity if you need to.
5
SHARPEN TONE
Repeat the above, but choose a far higher pixel radius this time: as a guide multiply your previous figure by 10.
6
ADJUST FINAL COLOUR TONE
Go to Layer> new Adjustment Layer>curves. Hit OK. From here you can go into the RGB menu at the top and select each of the Red, Green and Blue channels and modify their curves.