Photoshop Practice

I finally made some time to brush up on the many Photoshop tutorials that have escaped me over the years.
Here is a recent edit of our friend, model and actor Heather in the glamorous air-brush style that I see so often on Instagram. By no means easy or quick, this process is tedious and can take hours. The technique is a form of dodging and burning with a small soft brush (about 1% flow) in order to even out shadows and highlights that make up the skin’s texture. Unlike other faster techniques, there is no loss of skin texture from blurring or painting. You can follow along with PixImperfect on Youtube for this tutorial. I’m very happy with the result; I know some might criticize this type of retouching, that it’s dishonest or insincere and I am sympathetic to that. That being said, for me it’s about educating myself on the types of measures taken in post-processing to make your images and the people in them shine even more, in a way that is familiar and eye-catching to the viewer. Thanks for reading!