10 PHOTO RETOUCHING TIPS FOR FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY

If you want your fashion photography retouching be at a glossy magazine’s level, you should know some basic rules and follow recommendations while you retouch pictures in Photoshop and Lightroom. 

1. Follow the Latest Fashion Photography Editing Trends

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Modern fashion retouching is constantly changing and evolving. To work with unusual projects and customers, monitor current trends and the new directions on Instagram or online fashion magazines. Now, this is especially important because photographers are increasingly abandoning the usual framework revealing their creativity.


One of the most popular approaches to photo editing is the use of warm lighting in combination with mid-tones. Traditional lighting is again relevant now. Thanks to this, you get excellent shades and a natural look. Read these fashion photography tips to know what camera settings to set to work with natural light in studios.


Photographers use zero overexposure and give all the work to natural light. Use moody, mysterious or dark lighting if you want to get a cool fashion image. For more artistic and dramatic photographs, muted and stark lighting is a great option too.


Besides, unusual collages began to acquire special popularity. Check out works by Damien Blottiere to see how he combines several original photos into a single collage, changing angles and distorting reality.

2. Adjust Skin Tones

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Professional photo retouching is characterized by the perfect skin tone of the model. Working with the skin can be quite difficult due to the wide color spectrum of the shot.


You can notice both the darkest shades and the lightest. In addition, photo retouchers often come across the most incredible mixes of colors: orange, brown, green, pink and other shades in one photo. Watch this Photoshop tutorial to do it well.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJYPQAcxlMk


In fact, such combinations are quite natural. Therefore, if you make the skin in one tone, it can ruin the overall look of the photo and your entire high end photo retouching will be wasted. This is especially important for high resolution and advertising shots.

3. Do Natural Skin Retouching

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The natural look of the skin should be one of your main goals. This is not easy, but following all the recommendations you can achieve the desired result.


Proper sharpening is especially important. If it is too high, the skin will look unnaturally clear. Even the smallest details of the skin will be too visible. When retouching magazines and photos with high resolution, it is very important to perform the skin smoothing of high quality. If you can’t do it on your own, outsource high end photo retouching services and get professionally edited photographs for about $5-$10 per image.


To get necessary skills, you can practice in Photoshop for a long time or learn a few high-end retouching instructions like in the video below.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17MaBUFqbKg


When working in Photoshop, you can use the Clone and Healing tools to get good images. You can choose any way you like. But keep in mind, you should start your photo fashion retouching with the whole body and then move on to the skin.

4. Use Presets to Speed up Your Workflow

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Presets are special settings made by photographers or retouchers to get a specific color effect in a quick way. Some of them are free, some are paid. After you download and install these Lr plug-ins, you can apply them to one image or to the photoshoot. You get great photos with adjusted settings and specific color changes.


For example, you can apply black and white filters to your color shots. Thus, using presets of this type instead of pressing the Black and White Treatment button, you will get more contrast and sharp images. Look though these Free Fashion Lightroom Presets to achieve great results in several clicks.

5. Outsource Fashion Photo Retouching

8844061878?profile=originalToday, many photographers trust portrait image retouching to reliable outsourcing companies and for about 2 working days get edited images back. Such proven services are always the key to quality image retouching in the shortest time.


Moreover, it is possible to order professional photo retouching in your style. Read this Top 20 Photo Editing Services Review to choose the best service to try.

6. Use Frequency Separation Technique

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Thanks to this classical Photoshop technique, you can work with the skin colors and textures separately since the image is divided into low and high-frequency layers. It is especially valuable for magazine photo editing.


You can start with improving your skin. Shadows and colors at this stage remain unaffected. You adjust them at the next level. As a result, you get full control over color and detail.


However, you should be careful as this technique has its drawbacks. Sometimes photographers overdo or make mistakes and get worse results than they had hoped.


Remember that it is very important to preserve the natural look of the skin. People will never believe your pictures if the skin looks too perfect.

7. Whiten Teeth

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Beautiful white teeth are one of the key elements of cool fashion shots, especially if they are close-ups. However, poor lighting or the natural yellowness of teeth that most models have can spoil your pictures.


High End photo retouching presupposes teeth whitening but you need to take care of getting a natural result. To do it fast, download these Free Fashion Photoshop Actions and make teeth snowy white in several clicks.

8. Enhance Lips

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Remove all visible lip defects. Check the evenness of the lip line and if necessary make some corrections. Even with the highest quality lipsticks, there may be some problems, especially with bright colors.


Here are some Photoshop retouch tips which help you to make lips perfect:

  • Create a nice base by smoothing the first layer
  • Use the Adjustment Brush with warm-up settings to highlight lips
  • Set Contrast and Sharpness lower to make lips look softer
  • Do not use the same brush when retouching areas in the mouth

Any imperfections will be more visible in close-ups. You can also add a little gloss on the lips to get a more attractive image.

9. Add “Digital Make-Up”

8844063260?profile=originalEven having a professional makeup artist at the photo session, you may need a bit of image retouching while enhancing your shots. Makeup may be spoilt because of lighting or sweat. Fix all flaws during fashion photography retouching in Photoshop.

  • Enhance the irises with the Radial Filter
  • Smooth creases and wrinkles applying Clone Stamp and the Spot Healing brush
  • Adjust sharpness on the red channel not to damage the skin texture
  • To eliminate dark circles under the eyes, use the Clone Stamp and the Patch tool
  • Check if the skin of the face and the rest of the body is of the same tone

10. Use the Liquify Tool for Clothes/Body Reshaping

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Pay particular attention to clothing. It should be presentable and beautiful. Use the Liquify Tool to get great images no matter what effect you want and what to focus on. Watch the following Photoshop tutorial to remove clothing wrinkles realistically.

https://youtu.be/bYjmwTGgcQU

It can be used both for simple headshot editing and for more complex fashion photography retouching. Anyway, you will get great results.


You can perform many different actions with any element of the picture, including pulling, rotating, pushing, bloating, etc. This tool will help you correct any issue with clothes, its shape, get rid of various bulges that formed during posing.


However, you must be careful and not overdo it to keep everything natural.

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