Beauty Retouch Academy
Fernando Capelle
I absolutely infinitely and wholeheartedly love beauty photography and retouching. I especially love working with colleagues and clients who realize that retouching is a means to elevate an image, but it is not supposed to be fixing mistakes and shortcomings of the team.
It all starts with a beautiful professional model, who not only takes a very good care of her skin and overall appearance, but also knows how to look into the camera, how to take my direction, how to turn her head to show her best angles. Not every professional model is necessarily a good beauty model, and I have so much love and respect for good beauty models.
Since its first version, Photoshop has changed quite a lot. The functionalities it offers are greater now than ever before. But plugins are legion and for beginners it is hard to differentiate the ones that are truly useful and those that are just a waste of money. The Retouching Academy Beauty Panel has been around for a little while and was revamped very recently. I use it all the time when retouching but I get many questions about it. I am frequently asked if it is worth its price and if it makes my retouching any better. Here is my take on the panel, why I bought it, and above all, why I keep using it everyday.
The panel will not make creative decisions or do the work for you, it will be there to help you accelerate your workflow by creating the layers and adjustments you need for high-end retouching. What does this mean? If you need to create a frequency separation or dodge and burn layers, with the panel you only have to click on a button to create these layers instead of having to go through the whole process you would normally have to.
I am sure when reading that some of you will tell me how great actions and scripts are. Sure, you can do the same with actions and scripts, but the panel has a great advantage over both of them. Actually more than one advantage! First, actions have their limits and some techniques cannot really be put into actions without having to use scripts. Scripts, on the other hand, are way more advanced and they are awesome. Scripts are actually what is behind the buttons of the panel. However, if you are not into JavaScript or Apple Script, good luck trying to create your own.
Photographers that see me using the panel often ask me if the panel improved my retouching. This is kind of a tricky question. I do feel like it made my retouching better, and here is why and how. To me, retouching is about spending as little time as possible in front of my computer and getting the best result possible within that time. So yes, the panel definitely made me a better retoucher because I can retouch faster than before and in turn makes my time more profitable as I can edit more pictures within the same time.
It will also help you stay organized because the panel is created in the way that most retouchers edit their files. Meaning you will find dodge and burn right below common tools, then comes the frequency separation, and finally functionalities for skin and makeup. At the bottom of the panel you can also find quality control features as well as the most used adjustment layers that could come in handy any time during your retouching.
So did it make me a better retoucher? Well, yes, my files are more organized than before, and my workflow is quicker so I spend less time in front of my computer. Did it make my images look better? Somehow, I could say yes too because the panel helps me to be more structured in my workflow. By having a more consistent editing process, my images are getting better and more consistent too.
Currently priced at $69, the panel is not very expensive. Most likely after one shoot it will already be paid for. If, like me, you hate going through processes that could be automated, the panel is made for you. If you are lazy, not well organized in your retouching, or are looking something that will help you speed up your retouching, you should definitely give the panel a try.
When I first discovered it, I was not all that convinced about it. I thought it was pricey for what it did. But looking back now and seeing how much faster I can retouch an image using the panel makes it worth the money spent. No more fumbling around with actions and scripts from 20 different sources I found somewhere, somehow on the Internet. The panel gives me the tools I need to retouch my images quickly and efficiently, all in one single place, and it does the job it is meant for amazingly well.
If you are looking for Instagram-like vintage filters or added grain functionalities, this plugin is not made for you. But if you want to speed up your retouching, concentrate only on your work and not on details such as the offset or scale needed for a frequency separation in 8-bit, then this is a must have.
Hi Chris, thank you for your kind words!
Please check the Video Tutorials which are available to the official users on the website - there's a tutorial on the Magic Skin Tone script. We're planning to do more though, so hopefully that will be helpful!
Hi Julia,
am trying to install the free PIXEL JUGGLER but not succeed.
I have the last Extension manager. It tells me "Invalid signature".
I really want to buy the BEAUTY RETOUCH PANEL, but i want to be sure i will be able to install it.
Thank you,
Teiki
It's just that lately I noticed that Fstoppers writers seemed to write a lot of reviews for products and workshops created by other fstoppers writers which is why it looks like you guys are writing disguised ads for each other. Maybe I am just being paranoid but it feels like 50% of what you guys post these days are these "positive reviews".
It's a natural byproduct of having top-tier photographers writing for the site, who also create top-tier content for public use. That gives other writers greater access to their products for reviews like this.
Alice - While I understand where you're coming from.. look at it objectively. Even if it is a promotion, it's still a valuable article. They go over what the software does as well as the pluses and minuses of the software. I had never heard of this before. it's great to know about stuff that could improve your workflow.
I purchased this panel on day one and use it religiously. Julia and team did a fantastic job on it. I have a hard time learning new methods so I still haven't been able to use it to its fullest potential but I love what I am able to do with it so far.
A friend had this and I was able to play around with it. Aside form the sharpening issues I had (as stated in the article) I found the eye whitening to be pretty bad as well. Seems like it just blurs it out and doesn't leave any detail/grain in the whites of the eyes. I prefer to do that in a different way.
Portraiture might work just fine for fashion/editorial stuff, but in my opinion it doesn't cut it for beauty work. This panel is primarily aimed towards beauty retouchers, hence the name I guess and my comment on portraiture. I have tried portraiture and actually even use it for wedding retouching or proofing when I need something quick and the highest quality of retouching is not required. However to me it doesn't get you the quality you can get from local d&b for cleaning skin. But then again, to each their own :)
I am really fond of Julia's retouching techniques and find them the best I have ever seen. Hence, I am about to buy the Panel, I am using a PC but in a few months time I will be buying imac,, my question is would I be able to download it into my both PC (Windows) and imac
Though much of retouching can be easily undone or changed at any time, raw conversion can be a bit more difficult. The reason being that once you want to make adjustments to the actual layer for skin work like Liquify or Frequency Separation it needs to be rasterized.
Though, with thousands of different options it can be hard to pinpoint the perfect settings to best bring it out. Again, this is about the very basic concepts of art; color and contrast. The wrong toning can make images look flat or overly harsh and the wrong color and saturation can be off-putting.
I can get wrapped up in endlessly trying to make adjustments to an image but ultimately not making any improvements. Nothing will ever be perfect and you have to work with what you have. Having an eye for perfection is important when it comes to beauty work but obsession about achieving it can simply end in frustration.
While the end goal is effortless looking beauty, perfect skin can be a bit of a project. Loving the challenging process involved in creating this ever-so-eye-pleasing fantasy is, in the end, what makes a good beauty photographer and retoucher.
Another great way to take advantage of the tool is in the Basic and Advanced tabs which allow me to target specific colors and adjust them to my liking. If for example, I have a light blue seamless background, I can use the advanced tab to sample the background color and make adjustments to the hue and saturation of it to give me something more pleasing.
The above tools represent the core of what I use for tethered shooting, but there are a few miscellaneous tools that I use as well. One of those is the lens correction tools where I may try to eliminate vignetting or sharpness fall-off or the vignetting tool itself to add a slight darkening vignette. I also use the clarity slider on natural mode to give the image a bit more mid-tone contrast. The value for portraiture should typically be under 6 or 7, or the results can begin to look somewhat harsh.
I leave the color grading to the final PSD round trip stage. Lens corrections should also be made to achieve a clean neutral look, which typically involves the removal of any vignettes and/or adjusting keystone.
Of course, when this is all done, we have to get the file into Photoshop, at which point we need to decide on 8 bit or 16 bit color. I typically use 16 bit for anything editorial or commercial or anything that has very subtle gradations, and 8 bit for anything else.
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