A well-thought out strategy for any given retouch-
ing task is always preferable to a lot of fiddling and
Not all views are good for retouching. 100% is always the
best judging view, as it is the only “true” view of the pixels. But
100% may not always be the most practical working view, and
you may work at 50%, 200%, 400% 800% and even 1600%
in rare cases. Notice that there’s a pattern to these views,
and that views like 600% or 66.7% are not mentioned. This is
because the “odd” proxy views tend to scramble the view of
the pixels on screen.
Start with getting the colours as clean and correct as
possible, but leave the creative colour work for later. Clean
colours naturally sharpen the image and will reveal all the
flaws you need to retouch, so they won’t come as a surprise
later. Also clean up any dust and scratches, so you can get
on with the creative work without having to interrupt it with
general cleaning. If the subject is quite bright, make a (remov-
able) darkening adjustment layer, which will reveal any flaws in
the image, and more importantly, any flaws introduced in the
retouching. Panning the image with the space bar also helps
reveal flaws in otherwise smooth areas.
Over-retouching is the most common mistake, and the
art of retouching is making it seem perfect but natural. It’s the
many small things that come together to make a face look
great. It’s not necessarily the big dramatic move that makes
perfection. Make a quick retouching plan on a separate blank
layer, and try to stick to it. Retouching on a duplicate layer lets
you turn it off to view the original underneath. Of course, it
also gives you a safety net.
Work editably and give yourself a safety-net in every
situation. Use Snapshots, layers, history brush and use masks
instead of eraser. If you have many small layers that together
©gry garness 2007 www.grygarness.com T: +44 7973 832 033 No unauthorized copying or reproduction of this tutorial or its content.
messing about. Good retouching requires clever
thinking and planning, more than elbow grease.
The more techniques you know, the better you
can choose between them, and make decisions
that will save time as well as giving a more optimal,
even result. This is not a how-to tutorial, but pro-
vides some essential ground rules for retouching.
For actual tutorials on retouching, see:
www.grygarness.com/photoshop/advancedphotoshop.
htm
form a compositional element (e.g. an eye or a building) con-
sider joining them together in a Group. A Layer Group can
also be masked off, so that you’re in effect masking off several
layers together. It’s easy to generate too many layers, and to
lose track of them. It also helps to name the layers. Whatever
you do, always bear in mind that each element should be re-
versible without too much trouble.
Even if you work with layers, the History Brush can pro-
vide an additional safety net when embarking on some tricky
work with the Clone Stamp tool and Healing Brush. Mark the
History Source box of the present history state before you
start some tricky cloning, and using the History Brush tool to
reverse it exactly where it went wrong, or to reduce its effect
in areas. Snapshots are a good way of marking the progression
of a retouching task, and can be referred to as History Sourc-
es. Click on the Snapshot button in the History Palette at
every significant stage in the process (but don’t go completely
wild, as it takes up memory). If you’re using the History Brush
to borrow from a snapshot, you have to make sure you’re on
the right layer, and indeed a layer that existed when you took
the snapshot you’re borrowing from. The History Brush won’t
work if the layer or image has been transformed or resized.
Work in 16-bit at your peril for complex retouching
tasks, especially on big images. Yes, 16-bit may be ideal, but it
actually matters most at the stage where you do the major
colour correction. In a complex retouching scenario, the file
size will often increase five-fold when you include all the lay-
ers, alphachannels and layer masks. A normal file that starts
out at 8-bit 50 mb will easily grow to 250 mb. In 16-bit the
image layers will be twice as “heavy” but it’s the adjustment
layers and their masks that make a huge difference in file size.
You’ll inevitably be working on files of over a gigabyte. In the
end, all transforms take forever, screen redraws slow down, A FEW LINKS
saving becomes a drag, even with the faster processors and
lots of RAM. And the filter that you thought you might try for You got this tutorial from:
something special is unavailable. It’s one of those grrrh situ- www.grygarness.com/tutorials.asp
ations. My advice: Finish the colour corrections first, flatten
the image (or a copy) and convert to 8-bit before you start Info on 1-1 Photoshop training with Gry Garness:
retouching. www.grygarness.com/photoshop/advancedphotoshop.htm

See Gry’s retouching before & after-images

Large soft brushes are much softer and have a much big- www.grygarness.com/retouching/retouching1.htm
ger fall-off than small brushes of the same (per se) softness. www.grygarness.com/retouching/retouching2.htm
If you have a soft brush and you want to mask into a pointy www.grygarness.com/retouching/retouching3.htm
crevice or corner, don’t attempt to change the brush size to
fit into it. Instead, keep the same size brush, and paint over the Upgrade your computer memory
crevice. Then paint off the overspill with the opposite colour www.crucial.com
(usually black or white).
Check out new software
Learn to master the Gradient tool for masking in/out www.versiontracker.com
colour corrections, creating smooth blends between comp’ed
layers, nothing can beat it. It paints smoother than any user, Quickly test your colour vision:
and used cleverly, is a great time-saver. The second gradient www.toledo-bend.com/colorblind/Ishihara.html
- which uses Foreground to Transparency, will let you drag sev-
eral times in different directions without canceling out the Colour papers & free profiles
previous ones. www.colourtools.co.uk/ (click on consumables)

Learn to master the Pen Tool, and make open and closed Cheap & good print viewing lights
vector paths, which can be used as selections or to stroke www.outsidein.co.uk/solux.htm
or mask off a layer. For cutting out subjects that cannot be
extracted with plugins or masked because the colour is too
similar, nothing beats a clean well-defined path. The Pen tool
can also be used for making a path that can be stroked with
any of the painting tools. Great for anything where you need
an even coverage along a line and your hand just isn’t steady
enough!

When comp’ing, make sure that the sources for the

different elements are as similar as possible in quality, with
similar amounts of noise, resolution and sharpness. If it’s too
dissimilar, it can be hard to rectify later. You generally have to
match the inferior quality in noise and sharpness, so be careful
what you bring into the image.

©gry garness 2007 www.grygarness.com T: +44 7973 832 033 No unauthorized copying or reproduction of this tutorial or its content.