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Frequency Separation: The Technique That Stopped My Edits From Looking Like Plastic
Retouching Techniques

Frequency Separation: The Technique That Stopped My Edits From Looking Like Plastic

A client called me once to say my retouching looked “like a video game character.” I had spent two hours on that image. I had smoothed every pore, every shadow, every subtle line, and I handed back something that looked like it had been poured from a mold. She was kind about it, but I still have that file saved on an old hard drive as a personal cautionary tale. That was the moment I understood that I had been solving the wrong problem.

The Channel Extraction Trick I Wish I'd Known Years Ago (Plus a 3D Paint Splatter Technique Worth Stealing)
Video Tutorials

The Channel Extraction Trick I Wish I'd Known Years Ago (Plus a 3D Paint Splatter Technique Worth Stealing)

There’s a specific kind of frustration that comes from spending twenty minutes wrestling with Quick Selection on a wispy, complex subject, only to end up with a mask that looks like it was cut out with safety scissors. I’ve been there more times than I care to admit. Early in my retouching work, I treated channels like that drawer in the kitchen where you throw things you don’t understand but can’t bring yourself to delete.

Frequency Separation for Real Skin: What I Took Away from Jessica Kobeissi's Retouch & Chill
Video Tutorials

Frequency Separation for Real Skin: What I Took Away from Jessica Kobeissi's Retouch & Chill

There is a particular kind of dread that comes with opening a portrait file and seeing skin that needs serious work. Not “dust off a blemish” work. Real texture, real unevenness, real light that caught every pore. Early in my retouching career I handled that dread badly. I’d over-smooth, over-blur, and hand back something that looked more like a vinyl doll than a person. A client once told me the skin looked “plastic.

Before You Touch a Single Slider: What Professional Photo Editors Actually Look For
Video Tutorials

Before You Touch a Single Slider: What Professional Photo Editors Actually Look For

There’s a skill that took me years to develop, and it has nothing to do with Photoshop. It’s knowing what to look at before you open a single panel. Early in my retouching career, I would dive straight into skin work, dodging and burning and smoothing, only to deliver a finished file and have a client point out that the framing was off, or that a distracting element was pulling the eye away from the subject.

What Portrait Artists Need to Know About AI and Your Public Photos
News

What Portrait Artists Need to Know About AI and Your Public Photos

What Portrait Artists Need to Know About AI and Your Public Photos I’ve been watching the intersection of artificial intelligence and professional photography with careful attention, and there’s something happening right now that deserves our collective focus. Meta has quietly activated an AI image generation feature that’s fundamentally changing how our public Instagram photos can be used—and honestly, it caught many of us off guard. The Default Setting That Changes Everything Here’s what’s happening: if you have a public Instagram profile, Meta’s new AI tools can now pull your photos and use them as training material or as references for generating new AI images.

How to Paint Convincing Light Streaks in Photoshop Using a Wacom Tablet
Video Tutorials

How to Paint Convincing Light Streaks in Photoshop Using a Wacom Tablet

There is a specific kind of frustration that comes from knowing exactly what a finished image should look like and not having the tools to get there. For years, I added light effects to my beauty work with a mouse, and the results were stiff. The streaks were uniform. The glow felt pasted on. It was not until I finally committed to learning a pressure-sensitive tablet that everything clicked, and it happened faster than I expected.

Three AI Retouching Plugins That Replaced an Hour of My Workflow (And the Masks Are Insane)
Video Tutorials

Three AI Retouching Plugins That Replaced an Hour of My Workflow (And the Masks Are Insane)

There’s a specific kind of dread I used to feel opening a beauty close-up in Photoshop. Not the creative kind of challenge, the kind where you know what needs to happen, you know how long it’s going to take, and you also know the client wants it back by Thursday. Spot healing, frequency separation, then the real time sink: building out a dodge and burn structure that actually sculpts the face without making the skin look like a vinyl tablecloth.

Frequency Separation in Photoshop: A Step-by-Step Breakdown of Aaron Nace's Game-Changing Technique
Video Tutorials

Frequency Separation in Photoshop: A Step-by-Step Breakdown of Aaron Nace's Game-Changing Technique

There is a specific kind of dread that comes with zooming into 100% on a retouched face and realizing the skin looks like a wax museum exhibit. I know that dread well. Early in my retouching career, I was so focused on erasing every shadow and blotch that I was also erasing everything that made the skin look like skin. A client put it plainly: “She looks plastic.” That note stung, but it pushed me to find a better way.

Why Your Portrait Colors Look Wrong (And the Correction Order That Fixes It)
Color & Tone

Why Your Portrait Colors Look Wrong (And the Correction Order That Fixes It)

A few years back, I finished what I thought was a beautiful set of beauty edits for a skincare brand. Smooth skin, clean background, nice and bright. I sent the gallery over feeling genuinely proud. The creative director wrote back within an hour: “The skin looks a little… gray? And her lips are almost purple. Can you fix the color before we go further?” I stared at my monitor. The skin looked fine to me.

Dark Canvas First: What Urban Dodge and Burn Taught Me About My Portrait Work
Video Tutorials

Dark Canvas First: What Urban Dodge and Burn Taught Me About My Portrait Work

I came up through wedding photography, which means I learned to retouch under pressure and mostly by instinct. Skin, hair, the soft glow of a ceremony room — that was my world for years. So when I started freelancing for beauty brands and teaching retouching workshops, I had to deliberately go looking for techniques outside my comfort zone. That’s what led me to Watch the full tutorial on YouTube — a Kelvin Designs episode on dodge and burn for urban landscapes.

How to Retouch a Car in Photoshop: Scott Kelby's Workflow Broken Down Step by Step
Video Tutorials

How to Retouch a Car in Photoshop: Scott Kelby's Workflow Broken Down Step by Step

Most of my work lives in faces. Skin texture, under-eye circles, the way light catches a cheekbone. But the principles that make beauty retouching work, cleaning up distracting reflections, creating seamless backgrounds, making an image look inevitable rather than labored, apply everywhere. Including, it turns out, cars. I stumbled onto this tutorial while looking for a cleaner way to handle background reflections in product work, and it genuinely reframed how I think about any kind of studio shot.

How to Expose and Light Group Portraits When Skin Tones Vary Widely
Video Tutorials

How to Expose and Light Group Portraits When Skin Tones Vary Widely

Group portraits are one of those assignments that look simple on paper until you’re actually standing there with three people in front of your lens, each with a completely different skin tone, and your camera is doing something odd with the exposure. I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit. Even after years of shooting weddings and transitioning into beauty work, mixed-skin-tone group shots still require deliberate thinking at every stage, from how you set your light to how you read your meter.