◆ Photoshop · retouch

Portrait Retouching Extremes

Across recent portrait comps we swing between amateur fixes and heavy-handed smoothing, and both lose client confidenc…

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The same job, four heights

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DBecome — “help me grow”Across recent portrait comps we swing between amateur fixes and heavy-handed smoothing, and…+

Across recent portrait comps we swing between amateur fixes and heavy-handed smoothing, and both lose client confidence. Identify the pattern in how we brief retouch that creates those extremes, and recommend a single standard I should institute for skin work plus the quick visual check that proves it's hit the right balance before a presentation.

when the reply comes backPush once: ask it to sharpen the weakest part, and to say what it assumed.

The real tasks

1 of them

We repeatedly get pushback for portraits that either read amateur or over-retouched and I want to stop both extremes.

Who does this

1 roles

Art Director

Questions people ask

honest answers

Because you rarely think 'I want the redaction tool'. You think 'I have to share this without leaking the client's details'. Start from the need, and the feature finds you.

Real. Every job here was drawn from what people in real roles were actually seen doing in Photoshop — not a feature checklist.

No. Each page gives you a ready prompt you can paste into an AI assistant, plus the plain steps to do it yourself. Start with either — the goal is the finished job, not the tool.