Retouching with Portrait Professional

I've been using Portraiture for a few years now and still love it. I recently heard about Portrait Professional and decided to try the free trial. Talk about WOW! Skin smoothing, face shaping and more. It's super easy to use and there isn't much of a learning cure. Whether you're looking for minor retouching or more extreme retouching to your portraits - this is the program. It only took me a day playing with the free trial to realize that I needed to buy the software. You can turn on or turn off any of the effects to turn your images into flawless portraits. Right now, version 10 of the software is on sale for $39.95 - I'm not sure how long this special price is good for. Also, you can save an additional 15% using the code XZWT-OYHW-DQVG-LACP at checkout.

If you are a portrait photographer, I suggest playing with the free trial of Portrait Professional and seeing if it suits your editing needs!

Retouching Services from Retouchup.com

I recently had a client that wore her glasses to a session and preferred that she wore them for all the photos. Not only did I have to deal with glare but also distortion of the face where the glasses were. I feel that I'm pretty advanced in Photoshop, but editing this session felt overwhelming. I shot the session on Saturday and was leaving for vacation on Monday and would be losing a whole week of being able to edit her images. On the recommendation from other photographers I decided to try Retouchup.com and I'm happy that I did! Not only did they fix the glare but they also fixed the facial distortion behind the glasses and retouched the skin as well as stray hairs. Below is an example of the fixes they did to my RAW image. I sent in two images for retouching and I'm thrilled with their services. I'll be editing the rest of the session myself for proofing and any images that the client decides to purchase will be sent to Retouchup.com to remove glare and fix distortion.


The prices at Retouchup.com are really good: $2.50 - $10 an image depending on how much and what type of retouches you are in need of. My images were retouched and sent back to me for approval within 24 hours of submitting them as well. Even better - the first 10 retouches are free when you sign up for a new account. And those 10 free images can be any type of retouching from basic to extreme. I'm really happy with the results they produced and when an edit seems a little too time consuming for myself, I'll be sending my files to Retouchup.com!

Photoshop Actions I Can't Live Without

There's some things you just can't live without. Totally Rad Actions are one of them for me. I invested in TRA before I even started my business. And when TRA 2 came out, I was quick to pickup that set as well. TRA has really changed my workflow. I typically have 4 of the actions that I use on a standard image. I've created keyboard shortcuts for those actions and can whip through an image pretty fast. When I have time, I like to play around with the different actions to come up with new effects for photos. I do believe that you can always over photoshop an image - so typically don't use the actions at 100%. I also believe in getting it right in camera and not trying to fix the exposure in photoshop!

If you are thinking about picking up TRA, be sure to visit the website and click ont he Try Em tab - you can download a few actions to try before you buy. And be sure to check out the new TRA Recipe site. Photographers have uploaded their images, along with their TRA recipes. Great combos to try out on your own images.

Below is a before and after of a photo that I used these actions on to give you an idea of before and after!