About Julia Kuzmenko McKim, RA Team

Commercial Photographer & Retoucher in the Cosmetics industry Portfolio: juliakuzmenko.com, Instagram: @juliakuzmenko, Los Angeles + Dallas,

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Creative Retouching, Efficiency & Productivity, Industry & Community News, Stay Inspired

Generative AI for Freelancers

The freelance world is undergoing a seismic shift propelled by Artificial Intelligence (AI), especially Generative AI. In my latest blog post, you will find how I believe this transformative technology is reshaping the industry and can help YOU to recession-proof your freelance...

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Industry & Community News, Real World Practices, Stay Inspired

Guide to the Best Artist Grants and Opportunities for 2023

While retouching artists aren't usually really independent in their work and art (I guess, apart from AI creations now accessible to all, but that's a separate topic altogether), we often form partnerships based on commercial and/or artistic interests with...

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Beauty Retouching, Real World Practices

New Practice Image in the Skin Retouching Course

We've got some exciting news for those of you who are interested in continuous growth and professional development! We've added a new additional image file (.PSD) for the Oily Skin lesson in the Skin Retouching video course for you to...

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Beauty Retouching, Commercial Retouching, Real World Practices, Working With Colors

How Good are Your Color Matching Skills?

As a retouching professional in the beauty industry, you have to hone certain skills to be able to make necessary color adjustments to achieve target (reference) colors provided by the client. These skills include: the ability to discern subtle differences...

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Efficiency & Productivity, Hardware & Tools, Real World Practices, Video Tutorial

Retouching Eyes with the Eye Drops Button on the MUA Retouch Panel

The Eye Drops button on our MUA Retouch panel is like virtual Visine, only better. Use it to quickly clean up the whites of the eyes, add light and vitality to the eyes, as well as make adjustments to...

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Beauty Retouching, Real World Practices, Software for Retouching, Video Tutorial

Luminosity Masking with the Beauty Retouch Panel

Check out our new video for the Beauty Retouch panel users on how to use the Luminosity Masking buttons.  Our Luminosity Masking scripts create quick selections based on the luminosity values of your image, so you can turn them...

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Industry & Community News, Real World Practices

New Round! Beauty Retouching Challenge #3

Find out the results of the first two rounds here: Challenge #1 Results and Challenge #2 Results Overview with my notes and a timelapse retouching video. NEW ROUND! CHALLENGE #3 📌 RA Beauty Retouching Challenge #3 starts on April 13th, 2020; 📌...

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Real World Practices, Stay Inspired, Video Tutorial

Challenge #2 Results Overview

As we wrap up our second RA Beauty Retouching Challenge, I am pleased to find that this time there were more submissions that I personally liked compared to the first round. This is such a unique opportunity for everyone...

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Industry & Community News, Real World Practices

New Round! Beauty Retouching Challenge #2

CHALLENGE #1 RESULTS Our first Beauty Retouching Challenge went really well and over 200 artists of all skill levels submitted their retouches to the Challenge album. The Challenge #1 winner Axelle Manfrini‎ (laretouchefrancaise.com) now has 10x voting power in the...

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Industry & Community News, Real World Practices

Beauty Retouching Challenge #1: Ready, Set, Go!

Let’s use this downtime as an opportunity to practice, better ourselves, learn something new and have a little fun!✎ Challenge #1 starts on March 20th, 2020; ✎ Retouched Challenge Images are to be submitted by participants directly into a designated...

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Beauty Retouching, Commercial Retouching

Become a Professional Beauty Retoucher

The world of professional beauty retouching is very exciting, collaborative and diverse. You never stop learning and growing as a creative professional because every job is a set of new challenges that keep your problem-solving and retouching skills sharp and ever-evolving. 

Read on if you are interested in becoming a Professional Commercial Beauty Retoucher.

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Retouching Job Alert

#JOBALERT: Experienced Beauty & Product Retouchers for Avenue Retouching Agency

Avenue is a retouching agency catering to cosmetics brands and commercial photographers in the beauty industry, currently hand-picking a small selection of highly skilled freelance beauty retouchers:

We’re looking for an exceptionally talented retoucher to join our Freelance Talent Pool. You should have a minimum of 2 years professional retouching behind you with significant experience across commercial and editorial beauty. You must be used to a fast-paced, high-volume workflow and willing to go the extra mile when deadlines demand.

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Hardware & Tools, Industry & Community News

The New Wacom Intuos Pro is Available in Small Size Now

Wacom introduces the new Wacom Intuos Pro Small to its professional range of creative pen and touch tablets. Being the youngest and smallest in the family, it benefits from Wacom’s more than 35 years of know-how, innovation and experience in creating products for digital art and design.

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Industry & Community News, Real World Practices

WARNING: Creative Professionals & Models Targeted

Dear Artists, Beware, this alarming email has been sent out to many creative professionals and models around the world (see screenshots below). My colleague received it today, did a bit of digging on the web and found posts about it...

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Business & Clients, Efficiency & Productivity

Passion, Drive & The Everyday Challenges On The Way To Your Success. Part 2

Continued from Passion, Drive & The Everyday Challenges On The Way To Your Success. Part 1 Problem #2  Self-doubt & Lack of inspiration When I was in high school and it was time to start thinking of my future profession, I wanted to...

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Business & Clients, Efficiency & Productivity

Passion, Drive & The Everyday Challenges On The Way To Your Success. Part 1

I used to think that the first two - passion and drive - inevitably would lead me to the ever-desired success as an independent artist because, as we all know, "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration" and "The harder...

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Creative Retouching, Food, Product & Jewelry, Interviews & Making Of Stories

Advertising Product Photography Behind-The-Scenes: Creating Aqua Minerale Visuals

If you ever wondered how real-world Advertising Product Photography & Retouching jobs unfold for creative professionals, this article by our talented friends Maier Product Photography, will take you through the project steps from shoot to the final image. Max &...

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