Tips for Professional Retouching in Fashion Photography

Fashion photography is a vibrant industry with lovely items and models. The procedure that may make or destroy a fashion image includes retouching.

Which Retouching Software Should I Use for Fashion Photos?

The majority of fashion photographers use Photoshop, Lightroom, or Capture One Pro for retouching.

An international editor is Lightroom. It works well for sorting and selecting photographs, as well as for making modifications to the entire picture. There are specialised adjustment tools that let you work on specific areas of the image. However, Lightroom excels at making changes to a complete image at once.

Photoshop is required for high-end photography in order to improve and clean up the image. In fashion photography, the goal is to present an idealised subject. It must appear professional and highlight the greatest features of the person and the apparel.

Lightroom Fashion Photography Retouching

Although you can do all of your processing in Photoshop, many photographers feel that Lightroom is a lot more user-friendly. The image may then be opened in Photoshop to give it a polished appearance.

Lightroom aids in maintaining organisation. This is one of the main reasons it's so well-liked and why so many people pair it with Photoshop.

Decide on a colour profile.

After deciding the photos you wish to edit, open Lightroom and choose your favourite Color Profile. The colour profiles for your camera will show up here.

This should be completed before you begin editing because it will greatly influence your choices. Your decision will significantly alter the colour and contrast.

Use Lightroom's Basic Panel for Simple Changes

White Balance correction is the next step. Remember that White Balance may either be artistically employed or set in-camera to be 100% exact. You can raise your white balance over 6000+, for instance, if your style has a warmer tone.

Make your changes to the Basic Panel's Whites, Blacks, and Highlights and Shadows.

You can modify the exposure if your image doesn't appear to be properly exposed in these spots, but I don't advise doing so first.

These simple changes may significantly improve your look. Instead of immediately increasing the brightness of the entire image, it is advisable to adjust each one separately.

For the suggested Lightroom approach, Adobe wants you to move down the panels. To achieve the desired final look, though, you might have to go back and forth between panels and sliders.

Picture Credit: Aiony Haust

What to Change in the Presence Panel?

I advise utilising the Vibrance slider rather than the Saturation slider while retouching in Lightroom.

Mid-tones are elevated by vibrancy. Saturation intensifies every colour in the image, which can cause it to appear artificial and cartoonish. Watch how the Saturation slider affects your image as you adjust it if you decide to utilise it. 

Clarity should be added so that the image's contrast is increased. The finest retouching is frequently the result of stacking different effects at moderate intensities rather than using a lot of one particular tool, like Contrast.

You may combine Contrast, Clarity, Texture, and the Tone Curve to produce contrast.

Tone Curve Modification

The Tone Curve in Lightroom is the most potent tool you can employ, although many beginning photographers choose to avoid it.

The tones of your image are represented graphically by the tone curve. You can dramatically affect how the shadows and highlights appear by adjusting the curve.

The Tone Curve is most frequently modified in the form of a soft S.

Start by lifting up the curve in the middle when in the Point Curve. This will give a boost to the mid-tones and brighten the image. Pull the curve down in the bottom quarter of the curve or so, to deepen the shadows. These simple tweaks can make your image immediately look more dynamic.

If you’re new to the Tone Curve, try playing with the sliders in the Region Curve. This won’t give you as much control as the Point Curve but will help you make significant changes to the aesthetic of your image.

The HSL Panel's colour can be changed.

The colour will have a significant influence on your image whether you choose to make adjustments in Lightroom or Photoshop. Compositional elements like colour have a significant influence on your photo's appeal. You can prefer photographs with deep colour and lots of contrast, or desaturated ones.

You could try to tone down the orange saturation in your images unless your style is quite warm. It often appears too powerful. Observe the Luminance sliders as well. As they regulate the brightness of particular colours, they can have a greater impact on the appearance of your image than the Saturation sliders.

Picture Credit: Megan Ruth

For highlights and shadows, use split toning.

When it comes to post-processing, Split Toning is a Lightroom feature that you may employ to great advantage. Based on brightness, split toning applies colour tone to the highlights and shadows separately.

Holding down the Alt/Option key while dragging the Highlights and Shadows sliders will apply split toning. This will enable you to pre-visualize how each colour will appear when added to the image and see how it might be varied.

Set the saturation level to whatever you deem suitable for the image. Typically, this is a little number. Often, a little bit is all you need to add visual impact to your photographs.

Use the Sharpening Mask to Sharpen Selected Areas.

The default sharpness setting in Lightroom is a decent +50. Use the Sharpening Mask, however, to have greater control over how much sharpening is added to your shot.

You may use the Sharpening Mask to only sharpen the areas of the image that require it. In photography, you don't always need to sharpen the backdrop or every other aspect of the image. Simply focus the sharpness on the area of interest. Sharpening Mask might be useful in this situation.

How to Improve Your Photoshop Image

It's time to open the image in Photoshop after finishing these procedures in Lightroom.

choose "Photo" and then "Edit In"

Select Photoshop's Edit option from the drop-down menu. The image will open in Photoshop as a result.

Retouching your fashion photos may be done using a variety of tools and possibilities. Start with cleaning methods because a clean image serves as the basis.

100% zoom in on your image Eliminate any dust on the sensor as well as the model's skin blemishes and flaws. The Spot Healing Brush, Healing Brush, Patch Tool, and Clone Stamp Tool are the most effective tools for this.

Spot Healing Tool

When it comes to cleaning up your photographs, the Healing Brush tool and the Spot Healing Brush both have a little advantage. To remove a minor defect, use the Spot Healing Brush instead of selecting a sample of pixels from a specific location. This is done for you by Photoshop, which enables quick dust and small area correction. Similar tools are available in Lightroom, but utilising them frequently would significantly reduce their efficiency. This kind of cleaning procedure works best in Photoshop.

Make sure to clean up your image, even the tiniest imperfections. You'll be astonished at the change and how polished your image looks once you remove all the little particles.

Picture Credit: Polina Tankilevitch

For instance, in the photograph above, I used the Spot Healing Brush to get rid of the acnes on the model's skin. Since the tip of the nose was more heavily darkened, I made selections with the Healing Brush to give it a smoother appearance. For this kind of treatment, the Spot Healing Brush is more than enough.

Patch tool

One tool you'll use repeatedly is the Patch Tool. It's ideal for fast erasing more significant defects from your photograph by making a pick from another area of my picture. I frequently use it to remove faults from backdrops and major skin imperfections on models.

Draw a circle around the region you want to repair and then drag it to the area you want to replace it with while using the Patch Tool. Press Ctrl/Command + D to deselect it after that.

Picture Credit: Anna Shvets

The tattoo on the model's arm was removed in the image above using the patch tool. Sometimes a tattoo is unwelcome or unsuitable for the desired appearance. Here, the patch tool removed it without any difficulty because the skin was quite uniform.

Clone Stamp tool

One of the most often used tools in Photoshop is the clone stamp tool. It is crucial to retouching in fashion photography. It allows you to change the opacity of the pixels and copy and paste pixels from one area of the image to another. I remove stray hairs, polish the skin and backdrop, and fix any issues with the clothes using the clone stamp.

Choose "Current Layer and Below" from the menu. Maintain 100% Flow while adjusting Opacity as necessary. Ideally, you want a very soft brush with a low opacity, however it depends on the image.

Picture Credit: Aiony Haust

Dodge and Burn Tool

Dodge and Burn is a crucial tactic. It can assist you in cleaning up and resolving problems where pixels can be made lighter or darker. To add some dimension, you may work on the image's highlights and shadows. You may retouch the lips and the catchlights in the eyes.

To see the areas you might wish to use this kind of retouching, zoom in. After using the tools described above to clean up your image, you might wish to do this.

Make sure to use a very low opacity (under 10) when using the Dodge or the Burn tool to prevent a phoney and too aggressive appearance.

To observe the impact each tool is having on your image, create separate layers for Dodge and Burn. To precisely repair your photograph, work at a close distance. Make careful to zoom out to see how it appears overall and whether you need to make any other adjustments.

Picture Credit: Kamila Maciejewska

Frequency Separation Method

You may create high-frequency and low-frequency layers with the assistance of the frequency separation method in order to modify colours and objects individually. Editorial photography regularly use this method.

When both layers are within your control and the manipulations made on one level don't effect the entire picture, this approach makes it possible to manipulate skin tone without influencing other colours and hues in the image.

The Frequency Separation tool has a few disadvantages as well. Some photographers struggle to find the perfect balance and overuse photo editing, which results in the "false" impression.

Picture Credit: Amir Seilsepour

Conclusion

Fashion photography is distinguished by a luxurious, glossy appearance. It needs delicate, expert retouching.

Every photographer gradually develops their favourite method of operation. You may improve your commercial fashion retouching abilities by using these suggestions.