Professional Beauty Retouching in Photoshop: Dealing with unusual problems

Professional beauty retouching requires a systematic approach that preserves natural features while addressing challenging imperfections. This comprehensive workflow demonstrates how to handle difficult skin conditions, uneven textures, and color inconsistencies that standard healing tools can't resolve.

The process combines multiple frequency separation techniques with strategic dodging and burning to tackle unusual problems like severe acne scarring, uneven foundation coverage, and mismatched nail polish colors while maintaining realistic skin texture throughout.

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Practical Tips

Key techniques for handling challenging beauty retouching scenarios:

• Start with liquify for subtle structural adjustments before any skin work to avoid distorting your retouching efforts
• Use multiple frequency separations with different blur radii - small for details like eyelashes, larger for skin volume issues
• Switch between content-aware and proximity match healing based on object size - content-aware for large areas, proximity match for small spots
• Apply blur filters to painted lip contours to maintain realistic softness and avoid harsh artificial edges
• Work with auxiliary layers to spot problems that everyone notices, then switch them off to catch subtle issues only you can see

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