We are very excited to announce the release of our new Hair Retouching video course taught by Michael Woloszynowicz of Vibrant Shot Photography, the author of our Master D&B and Color Grade courses. This course is in an instant download format, 3h 38m long and consists of 12 Lessons and 23 videos covering retouching of the common hair issues that we encounter in Beauty, Portrait and Fashion images every day.
You can read the full description and see the practice images that come with the course on our website, and I want to share the effect that this course had on me personally.
My Personal Relationship With Hair Retouching
I used to do a lot of retouching work for a celebrity hairstylist in the past (2011-2013) and even had my work frequently published in the leading Hairstyling magazines in the USA (Hairs How Magazine in the US & Russia, Modern Salon, American Salon to name just a few). I also photographed and retouched advertising and packaging images for Pravana, a Los Angeles based hair color & hair care products manufacturer. I know first hand how tedious and time-consuming hair retouching is. After working in that industry for a couple of years, I decided that I had enough of hair madness and moved on to the cosmetics market. Who doesn’t love retouching skin and makeup?!
Being a super busy working photographer and retouching artist (aren’t we all?!), I always focus on the face when retouching my images, especially because now the vast majority of my clients are cosmetics skincare and makeup companies. The main reason why I would often leave the hair in its natural mess in my images is that the techniques that I had learned from whatever beauty retouching courses and videos that were available back when I was starting out, taught me the “professional” hair retouching techniques that were “technically correct & proper” and took sooooo long in each and every image, that I started resenting hair retouching altogether after a while. Couldn’t even think of retouching another strand of hair 🙄.
Now, during the production of this course taught by Michael, I had to watch every video 2-3 times, and Michael’s approach and techniques made me realize how simple most of the hair retouching issues actually are when broken down and handled in the way that he teaches.
I wasn’t looking to change my retouching workflow after watching this course, but it kind of happened naturally. Michael’s approach to hair retouching just changed my mindset and the way I used to think of hair retouching. Through this course he showed me that clean and quality results can be achieved quickly and easily, and I will never look the same at any hair challenges in my images. Thanks, Michael! 🙂
I was already familiar with the tools and techniques that he is using, but it’s the way he approaches various hair issues with them is what affected my perception of hair retouching the most.
Lessons 11-12: Advanced Hair Repair: Baby Hair & Forehead Cleanup, Wig Hairline Repair
If You Retouch Beauty, Portrait & Fashion Images, This Course is For You
I personally highly recommend this course to everyone who does Beauty, Portrait and Fashion photography, where the hair is secondary, but still very important for the overall impact of the image. It is not a course on hair retouching for hair product advertisement where you have to completely re-build, extract, re-color and polish each strand, but for the type of images that we all deal with on a daily basis.
Also, one of the major bonuses of this course is that besides our custom hair strand and background brushes, we’ve included 8 practice images from the shoot that Michael and I did in Los Angeles a few months ago (you may remember the BTS video that we shared during our Beauty Retouching contest recently).
These images come in the form of layered PSD files with Michael’s layers and folders inside them, so you can watch the lessons and analyze each Layer, Layer Mask and Adjustment Layer settings along the way. Each PSD contains only the retouched parts demonstrated in the course, and you can complete all of the assignments listed on pages 12-13 of the Digital Guide PDF that comes with the course.
We encourage you, though, to go further and complete a full retouch of each image and then share your results in the Retouching Academy Facebook group for peer and pro feedback.
Check out the outline and the practice images included in our new Hair Retouching course and Happy Retouching!
Hair Retouching video course
