I get a lot of questions about retouching. More specifically, what I do in retouching. But if there is one consistent theme in the questions I get, it’s “Do you ever have any information or lessons for total beginners?” For years now, the answer has been “Not yet” but starting today, and going over the next few weeks, I will be uploading a free YouTube series on Photoshop Beginner’s Basics: Retouching. These 10 videos will get you off the ground using Photoshop because, as they say, you can’t run until you’ve learned to walk.
“I have no idea how to use Photoshop. Seriously.”
Well, then that’s why I am doing these! To be clear, these videos are not designed to take you step by step through a full image retouch, but instead to show you the very basic, rudimentary (and vital) tools in Photoshop as they relate to portrait retouching. After all, showing you the steps of how you build a car is meaningless if you don’t understand how the parts of the car actually work, right? Once you get thru these, you will be ready to tackle proper retouching approaches using this legendary Adobe app.
Also, here on Fstoppers, we’ve covered Photoshop retouching once or twice, but I am not just being silly by adding yet another video series on the subject. You see, everyone learns a little bit differently, and I have found that, in teaching photography and retouching for 3 years now, that some of the most common feedback is “This went over my head, like all the videos and tutorials I’ve ever watched.”
So, I reasoned starting from the absolute bottom would help some newbie retouchers/photographers out.
“Am I a total beginner? I guess I’m not sure.”
There are plenty of video tutorials online showing you how to do awesome color work, serious skin work with dodge & burn and frequency separation, or how to work channels and luminosity selections for total control of your workflow, and tons more. Photoshop is almost limitless, and there are thousands of photographers out there who want to take their retouching to a more advanced level. As such, plenty of tutorials exist for them, as one can expect.
But what about the bare-bones beginner? For every photographer out there wondering how to leverage luminosity masks the best way, there are 10 photographers still wondering what a layer is. Or what the heck a “healing brush thingy” is and what it does. And that’s ok.
And that’s why I thought a lot of groovy people could benefit from these videos.
“Ok, cool, so what’s next?”
My hope is to help out anyone who’s been too scared to even try Photoshop for the first time, or gave up long ago on trying to learn it. I mean, I know all too well how complex a program it is, and can be quite daunting to the complete newbie. Today marks the launch of the simple intro, but stay tuned very soon for the first video discussing the extremely important factors in setting up Photoshop when you first start using it, and stay tuned as the series rolls on with beginners basic lessons on:
- Lesson 1: Layers
- Lesson 2: Masks
- Lesson 3: Adjustment Layers
- Lesson 4: Healing/Spot Healing/Patch
- Lesson 5: Selections
- Lesson 6: Brushes
- Lesson 7: Filters
- Lesson 8+ are to be announced.
Time to stop being scared of Photoshop. Check out the latest Beginner’s Basics Series and get yourself up to speed!
I created the Beginners Basics Series for you, the complete and total beginner. A demographic I think is under-represented in the online video tutorial world for Photoshop. Video shows Photoshop CC14, with the interface modified to how I prefer it. Any version back to CS6 will still be relevant to this tutorial. These videos and more can also be found on my Master Classes Facebook Page (warning: glamour).
