Complete Lightroom and Photoshop Portrait Retouching Tutorial

Most online photography tutorials focus on one thing—how to sharpen better or how to retouch shiny skin, for example. This video goes way beyond that, walking you through how to retouch a portrait from start to finish using both Lightroom and Photoshop.

The tutorial was created by photographer and educator Glyn Dewis as a followup to a presentation he gave at SWPP in London. That’s where he captured the RAW file using a single Elinchrom light, and in this 20 minute tutorial he shows you exactly how he retouched that image when he got home—he takes you from RAW file to print-ready final image.

Here’s a before and after:

This is the result of a few minimal adjustments in Lightroom—white balance fixed, sharpening applied, a bit of dodging on the face, and lens corrections—and a bunch more work in Photoshop ironing out details, bumping the clarity, and dropping in a background texture.

It’s not a ton of work, but every change has a purpose and is applied carefully. These are small changes that, by themselves, might not make a huge difference (except the white balance adjustment…), but taken together they can really transform an image.

Check out the full video above, and if you want to find out how Glyn set up the lighting for this photograph, head over to his website where you’ll also have the chance to download the RAW file in exchange for your email.

(via ISO 1200)