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This interactive eBook is for you if you are beginning your journey into the professional Beauty & Portrait photography retouching world. You don't need to waste your time learning all the tools and panels Photoshop has to offer, if you only want to master or improve your photo retouching skills.

Our eBook will help you to get a clear understanding as to what tools you need to be familiar with, and what to do with them to turn your photographs into works of art. In just three lessons you will know all the necessary panels, tools, functions and essential photography and retouching information to prepare you to dive into the advanced Beauty, Fashion & Portrait retouching techniques.

Moreover, you will learn how to fine-tune your Photoshop for peak performance, how to read and understand colors, what you need to know about color management, how to use custom brushes for Beauty and Portrait photography, what essential keyboard shortcuts you need to know, and a lot more. A few video tutorials will demonstrate the difference between Photoshop retouching tools, the trickiest Blending Modes and Adjustment Layers concepts, explain what's so great about Layers and Layer Masks and more.

In the Bonus Goodie Bag you will find our Beauty Essential Actions ( + User Manual = $69 Value), a collection of Gradients and the Beauty Custom Brushes descriptions (URL for free download included). We also added a lot of useful information & materials in the "Getting Better Every Day" and "Photography & Photoshop" (Glossary included) PDF booklets. Please note that our Bonus materials will only work in Adobe Photoshop CS4-CS6, for more information please visit our FAQ page.

Check out an excerpt from my interview with a fellow artist, industry expert and one of the top educators, the author of "The Art of Dodge & Burn", Krunoslav Stifter for my next eBook "From Amateur to Pro in a week":

"...As far as tools go. For a beauty and fashion retoucher or anyone working on portraits in general, there is really very limited number of tools that need to be mastered. I would say learn: layers, layer masks, selections, adjustment layers of which Curves would be probably the most useful one, learn how to be proficient with the Dodge and Burn tools or their equivalents, learn clone and healing tools and you are pretty much there. Sometimes you might have to use few filters like liquify and raw conversion but that is the bulk of it, I would say. Now, once you learn them, master them. Apply 90-10 rule or 80-20 rule. Spend mastering those tools 90% of your time and spend the remaining 10% of your time learning the other tools. The reason is simple. You will use the mentioned tools 90% of your time. I did not include here things like knowing what file format is most suitable for the job, what color profile etc. But those are the things you learn pretty fast."

This eBook is based on the first part of our "Advanced Beauty, Fashion & Portrait Retouching for Pro Photographers" course that I developed and currently teach. The second part of the course with plenty of advanced retouching video tutorials and retouching techniques will be covered in the "From Amateur To Pro In a Week" eBook.

LESSON I Setting Up For a Good Start:

  Preferences & Memory Usage

  Customizing Your Workspace

  Image File Formats, Resolution, Size & Canvas

  History Panel

  Color Theory & Management

LESSON II Painting & Retouching Tools:

  Brush, Clone Stamp, Healing Brushes & Patch Tool

  Default Tool Keyboard Shortcuts

  Brush Opacity vs. Flow

  Free Transform Tool

  Selection Tools & Refine Edge Function

  Liquify Tool

  Photoshop Actions

LESSON III Essential Photoshop Panels for Beauty & Portrait Photographers:

  Layers Panel: Opacity& Fill, Handling, Grouping

  Blending Modes

  Layer Masks

  Adjustment Layers

BONUS MATERIALS:

  Essential Beauty Actions set ($69 value: Magic Smile, Magic Eyes, Frequency Separation preset, and many more) + User Manual & Video tutorial below

  Getting Better Every Day in Photography & Photoshop / additional PDF

  Custom Beauty Brushes + URL (free download) & User Manual

  Collection of Photoshop Gradients

 

 

HOW THIS EBOOK IS DIFFERENT?

  Most of the educational retouching programs (DVDs and eBooks) that are out there these days were created by professional retouchers, or famous photographers who teach their specific retouching style. I have watched many such DVDs that try to beat each other in the amount of hours of retouching they offer, and I fell asleep every time... just kidding, I didn't. But honestly, although they are pretty expensive, I don't think I've ever watched one of those programs from start to finish. Simply because I don't need all those hours of retouching in real time and chit-chatting to fill it up. I am a busy person and I want specific knowledge and skills, I don't have 10 hours to watch a retouching DVD, trying to fish out a couple of things that I don't already know.

 Professional retouchers are getting paid for every of those 30-50 hours they spend on an image. If that's what you want to do, than you definitely need one of (or all) those DVDs, because that's what they teach. Hours and hours of retouching on 200-300% zoom. No doubt, they are masters of what they do, but they are pro retouchers. I am a pro photographer and retoucher, I work super fast, but I can still be proud of the images I deliver: www.juliakuzmenko.com. I create those photos from start to finish, and I can tell you all about how to get to where I am at with my photography and retouching today, just follow my lead.

WHY THIS EBOOK IS SHORT?

 If you are a working photographer like me, than most likely you want to learn how to deliver excellent results very quick. There are always other important things for a pro photographer to get done such as promoting him- or herself to get more work, or actually making money shooting. More often than not, we professional photographers have retouching fees included into our photography service charges, so the quicker we get things done and submit to our clients, the better for us and our bottom line it is. No way I could afford to spend 30 hours retouching one image. I bet, you are the same way and that's why you are here now.

 I wanted to create an educational retouching program that is right on and brings to your attention ONLY what is essential to learn to be able to turn Beauty, Fashion, & Portrait images into works of art in post-production. And that is why the name of this eBook is "Creative Retouching Essentials In A Day". It is well-structured and short enough (about 30 pages in total + a few short videos in the chapters that require visual demonstration) to allow you to absorb and digest everything you need to know before you move on to the advanced retouching for Beauty, Fashion & Portrait photography within one day.

WHY YOU NEED THIS EBOOK EVEN IF YOU THINK YOU ALREADY KNOW PHOTOSHOP?

 You don't know what you don't know. Even if you have been working in Photoshop for a couple of years you may still be lacking some knowledge that will lead you to that break through in your retouching. From my own teaching experience I know that a lot of photographers say: "Oh, I know all the essentials - I've been doing it for 2-3 years!" And when we get down to the advanced part of the course, I realize that they don't know what Layer Masks are, never used the Free Transform tool or some of the Blending Modes, have no idea how to set target color in the Curves Adjustment layer or never heard of other essential things like that. After reading this eBook you will have a clear understanding as to what tools you need to be familiar with, and if you are not yet, than you should practice working with them before you begin to learn Advanced retouching techniques. Essentials are super important, and any professional retoucher will tell you that.

Check out our "From Amateur to Pro in a Week" eBook, when you know that you are ready to learn to become a Beauty retouching wizard.

 

Not refundable due to digital nature of the product.