Beauty Retouching for Beginners
Self-taught retouching can get you somewhat decent results, but they vary from image to image. That doesn’t hold up when you offer retouching as a service, especially to paid clients, brands, retouching studios, or creative agencies. This course teaches you the professional retouchers’ methods: from raw processing and cleanup, through skin and color work, to the finishing pass and export, all in one non-destructive workflow.
Created by Julia Kuzmenko McKim and Michael Woloszynowicz, professional beauty and fashion photographers, retouchers, and educators. Every lesson distills decades of combined industry experience into the refined retouching methods we use in commercial work.
- Duration
- Over 4 hours
- Access
- Lifetime
- Format
- Streaming · self-paced
Photography & retouching by Julia Kuzmenko McKim using RA Panels
Professional Retouching Workflow From Raw File
to Finished Export
Most photographers and retouchers start learning retouching through scattered YouTube tutorials. The results are often hit-and-miss: one image looks clean, the next over-processed, and every new photo is a new problem to solve.
What free tutorials don’t give you is the professional workflow sequence, the logic behind the choices, and the standards that paid clients, brands, retouching studios, and creative agencies expect. Every stage of this workflow has been perfected through hundreds of revision rounds within real-world commercial projects.
This course gives you one complete workflow, taught in order of execution by working commercial photographers and retouchers. The non-destructive approach is key, so your client revision requests never mean redoing any of your work from scratch.
You are invited to retouch along through 11 hands-on assignments on the included beauty practice files, shot on professional large-sensor cameras. The custom action sets and Dodge & Burn brushes are yours to keep. By the end, you have a repeatable workflow and portfolio-ready retouched images to show for it.
- Lessons
- 40+ video and text lessons
- Assignments
- 11 hands-on assignments
- Practice files
- 7 x Beauty and other images
- Bonus materials
- Custom actions and brushes
- Support
- Comment under any lesson. Need help with course access? Reach out to us →
Watch our courses anywhere via the Kajabi app.
Course Modules & Lessons
We’ve distilled the most impactful information and cut out the fluff, so you can learn and apply your new retouching skills as efficiently as possible.
The lessons are clear and to the point. Each module includes key topics, video tutorials, practice beauty images, bonus materials, and hands-on assignments to help you internalize what you learn quickly.
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1.1Introduction (1:40)
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1.2Adobe Lightroom: Develop Module Introduction (8:28)
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1.3Adobe Lightroom: Common Key Adjustments (4:00)
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1.4Capture One: Interface & Key Adjustments (2:21)
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1.5Exporting Files to Photoshop (4:08)
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1.6Image File Formats (Reading)
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1.7Image Resolution (Reading)
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1.8Handling Skin Texture in Raw Files
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Assignment #1: Processing Your Raw File
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2.1.1Photoshop Interface & Panels (4:01)
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2.1.2Keyboard Shortcuts (1:34)
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2.1.3Understanding Layers (5:04)
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2.1.4Understanding Layer Masks (4:31)
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2.2.1Cropping: When & How (5:32)
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2.2.2Smart Structure of Your PSD Files (2:42)
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Assignment #2: Setting up Your PS Workspace
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2.3.1Retouching with Graphics Tablets (Reading)
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2.3.2Graphics Tablet Models (Reference)
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2.3.3Setting Up Your Wacom Tablet, 2025 Update (Reading)
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2.3.4Choosing Your Stylus Nibs (Reference)
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Assignment #2.1: Setting up Your Graphics Tablet
- Basic cleanup
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3.1.1Spot Healing Brush (13:19)
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3.1.2Healing Brush (8:33)
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3.1.3Clone Stamp (6:26)
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3.1.4Grafting (4:34)
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3.1.5Checking Your Retouching Progress (Reading)
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Assignment #3.1: Basic Cleanup
- Frequency Separation (FS)
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3.3.1FS Technique Introduction (6:12)
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3.3.2FS Mechanics (8:26)
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3.3.3Lean PSD Approach After FS (3:38)
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Assignment #3.2: Frequency Separation
- Finishing up the basic cleanup
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3.4Finishing Up the Basic Cleanup Phase (9:29)
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Assignment #3.3: Finishing Up the Basic Cleanup
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4.1Dodge & Burn Technique (7:29)
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4.2Dodge & Burn Mechanics (16:18)
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4.3Bonus: Dodge & Burn Contouring on 50% Gray Layer (3:30)
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Assignment #4.1: Dodging & Burning, Sphere Exercise
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4.4Working Smart with D&B Actions or the Beauty Retouch Panel (1:33)
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Assignment #4.2: Dodging & Burning
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5.0Color Management At a Glance (Reading)
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5.1.1Using Basic Selections for Color Corrections (7:43)
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5.1.2Using Complex Selections for Color Corrections (5:41)
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5.2Color Corrections (12:17)
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Assignment #5: Local Selections & Color Corrections
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6.1Finishing Up with Color Grading (9:26)
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Assignment #6: Color Grading
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7.1Finalizing & Exporting Your Images (8:08)
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7.2Sharing Your Retouching Work Online
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Assignment #7: Exporting & Sharing Your Retouching Work Online
Created and Taught by Seasoned Creative Professionals
Beauty photographer and retoucher with over a decade of industry experience, shooting and retouching for brands like Urban Decay, Pat McGrath Labs, Lululemon, and many others alongside her Avenue Studio team.
Michael is one of the leading Retouching Academy instructors, globally known for not only his top-quality photography and retouching work but also for his accessible style of teaching and Photoshop expertise.
What Our Users
Are Saying
From photographers and retouchers who use what they learned from our courses and the RA Panels in their everyday retouching work.
Frequently
Asked Questions
Photographers and retouchers with basic Adobe Photoshop knowledge who want to learn professional beauty retouching.
The course builds your skill base for professional-level work: proper skin retouching methods, key principles, tools, and techniques, including close-up beauty.
- Professional skill level. Whether you want to offer retouching alongside your photography or build a full-time retouching career, this course prepares you for either path.
- Time-saving workflows. Efficient methods and multiple solutions for the most common beauty retouching challenges.
- Career potential. The workflows you learn in this course will qualify you for entry-level (junior) in-house retouching roles, creative agency opportunities, or remote freelance work from anywhere in the world, with a solid foundation for continued professional growth and industry standards.
If you are aiming at senior in-house roles, remote commercial freelance work, or clients like beauty and wellness brands, consider the All-in-One Beauty Retouch bundle instead. It includes this course plus the Professional Beauty Retouching course, which goes beyond technique into the wider expertise expected of a retouching professional: file handling, file structure, business etiquette, and the most commonly used professional methods.
Yes. The course is taught in Adobe Photoshop, the standard software for professional retouching.
Even if you begin culling and editing your images on an AI platform, professional beauty and fashion images usually require a proper finish in Photoshop.
A graphics tablet (Wacom or other) is recommended, but it is not required to start. Module 1 will help you set it up properly.
For Beginner-Level courses and bundles, no retouching experience is required. Some basic knowledge of the Photoshop interface, layers, masking, and basic tools will be helpful. We’ll take it from there: these courses include introductions to the essential Photoshop tools and key techniques.
Intermediate to Advanced courses and bundles assume existing retouching experience. They touch on fundamentals but focus on advanced methods, and don’t cover the basics in depth.
Lifetime. Once enrolled, the course stays in your account, on the web, and in the Kajabi app.
Enrollment includes all course materials and any future updates. Courses are self-paced and hosted on a streaming platform, so you can learn at your own speed and revisit lessons anytime on desktop, laptop, or mobile devices through the Kajabi app.
Yes. Every course includes downloadable bonus materials such as practice files, custom actions, and brushes. You’ll find them at the start of each course on the Additional Materials & Downloads or Welcome to the Course pages.
Yes. Leave comments under any lesson, and our team or Julia will answer and support your learning.
Some courses also include a private community where you can ask questions, suggest new lessons, and get feedback from instructors and fellow students.
Immediately after purchase, you’ll receive an email with login details and instructions to start right away.
Returning students can log in via Customer Login or Learn → Your Course Library in the site’s top menu.
Course enrollments are generally non-refundable. That said, in the past five years, we have not received a single refund request for our courses. That’s the result of careful course creation and detailed descriptions that keep expectations and the learning experience aligned.
If you are unsure whether this is the right starting point for you, reach out to us before you enroll, and we’ll help you make the right choice.
After the purchase, if you’re not completely satisfied, reach out within 7 days and let us know what exactly went wrong.
See our Terms & Conditions.
Master Professional
Beauty Retouching
We teach what we have learned the hard way in real-world commercial beauty and fashion work.
