Beauty Retouching Workflow: The Calvin Hollywood Way

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Known internationally for his edgy style and approach to fashion photography, digital artist Calvin Hollywood takes you through his personal retouching workflow to show you how he achieves his signature look so you can take what you like, or what works for you, from his style and make it your own.

Introduction (02:01) Calvin introduces himself and talks about what he will be covering in the course.
Raw Conversion (05:18) Three main steps: white balance or temperature, change the exposure, and sharpen.
Flip the Lip (03:33) Before retouching the skin, Calvin changes the lips via flip horizontal to create symmetry. Works for the eyes and nose.
Retouching Skin (05:58) Calvin uses the healing brush to touch up the skin on a blank layer.
Difficult Spots (05:28) Using the clone stamp tool, Calvin removes flyaway hair in front of the eyes and duplicates some eyelashes to fill in some spots.
Softening Skin (05:51) Even the skin tone with the high pass filter and Gaussian blur to soften skin and keep the texture. This can be created as an action to duplicate this process over and over.
Dodge and Burn: Exercise (03:40) Calvin shows you his favorite retouching tools, Dodge and Burn, and gives you a practice exercise to help your technique.
Dodge and Burn: Retouch (09:35) Create light and shadow to give the face depth and change shape without using liquify.
Organizing Layers (04:07) Create layer groups to keep your workflow organized and easy to access.
Brighten the Eyes (06:00) Use the mask mode to brighten the iris of the eye with an adjustment layer and selective color.
Create the Mood (03:52) Calvin changes the mood and feel of his picture with the simplest aspect of his workflow that affects 99% of all his work - vignettes.
Add a Color Cast (05:17) By using a selective color adjustment layer, Calvin adds a color cast to change the "mood" of his photo - a step that is a signature of his work.
Color Cast with Fill Layers (04:22) Another method Calvin uses when adding his signature color cast.
Add Texture (04:15) Calvin enhances a picture by adding a texture overlay. Calvin has amassed a vast library of textures for this purpose and uses them creatively to add excitement to any photo.
Liquify (Optional) (06:48) Liquify is something that Calvin only uses 50% of the time because of the drastic changes it makes. He also uses it at the end of his workflow to give the client the option of having it in the final picture or not.
20/80 (04:36) Now that 80% of his work is done, Calvin finishes up the final 20% in the only way he can - by experimenting, playing around, and getting artistic. While this portion of the lesson really can't be taught, Calvin lets you "peek over his shoulder" to give you an idea of what he does in order to help you develop your own style. Another important aspect of this step? Sleep on it.
Final Review (03:25) Calvin takes you back through each layer and step in his workflow. Have fun experimenting with "Calvinizing" your own workflow and thanks for watching.

Course Time: 01 Hours 24 Minutes

P. Waterson

Apr 10 2013

Calvin, love your teaching style, and the way in which you explain features (what to do vs. not do). Thanks for a very informative series...so many features to play with, and your tips have expedited my learning immensely!!
A. Monterrubio

Feb 22 2013

Great Video!
B. Horst

Feb 13 2013

My favorite Photoshop teacher on Kelby Training thus far! Calvin, I love all your classes and they've helped me improve my PS techniques greatly! Thank you! Looking forward to more of your classes.
B. Bell

Feb 10 2013

Great Job, learned a lot from this. Thanks!
P. Davis

Feb 3 2013

Really enjoyed this course. Learned a lot of new techniques and enjoyed seeing how much difference the small details made. Good job!
J. Lince

Jan 26 2013

Sooooo helpful!!!! I use a lot of your work flow everyday now!!! Thank you so much!
C. Murphy

Jan 19 2013

Always admired your work. Great informative tutorial, thanks for sharing!!
I. Carmichael

Nov 27 2012

Absolutely fantastic, I'm new to photoshop and I use CS6 this workflow had me mesmerised from to start to finish. So looking forward to getting in my studio and trying these great techniques. Thanks Calvin and thank you Kelby Training the best investment I've ever made by far.
D.

Nov 23 2012

Great series. Very informative and very intuitive.
N. Schaffel

Nov 14 2012

I saw some of Calvin Hollywood's techniques in another web course. I was very pleasantly surprised that his series is on KT. I think his methods and presentation, as well as his English, is superb, well done and extremely helpful. Thanks for including him.
P.

Nov 11 2012

I think Calvin Hollywood is the best teacher I've seen to date. More of him. He's relaxed - straight to the point - no nonsense and you can see he loves what he does! BRAVO Calvin! Claudia Phatpuppyart.com
J. Moir

Oct 8 2012

I absolutely loved Calvin's retouching lessons! I found the pace and the instruction perfect for my skill level. I followed along on my own photo retouching and was very impressed. Steps were thoroughly explained and my finished product looks great. Thanks Calvin!
V. Schmidt

Sep 19 2012

Extremely useful course, to the point and easy to follow. Thank you!
J. Creasy

Jul 19 2012

Calvin is a genius, I love the techniques and he does not hold back showing you how to use them! Keep it up :)
M. Cox

Jun 8 2012

This was a great set of videos Calvin is interesting and gives great information.
P. Ruhm

Apr 29 2012

I'm going to have a workshop with Calvin soon (as a German in Germany) and I watched this course for two reasons: learning about Photoshop was the first, but also to see the way how calwin is "teaching" and I liked both! For me he offered very easy ways for beauty retouching, different from what I did see here in other lessons. I am very excited to go to the workshop, sure I will learna lot.
A. Lawrence

Apr 9 2012

Calvin is a really great teacher, he is very easy to follow and explains everything very well. Watching this Course has taken my Photoshop skills to the next level. I Can't recommend Calvin Enough.
P. Fredette

Apr 4 2012

LOVED this tutorial! I definitely learned some new tricks to my beauty editing.
S. Sergi

Feb 28 2012

I love the "softening skin technique" very much, Calvin!!! Thank so much!! Stefano Sergi

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Your Instructor

Calvin Hollywood

Digital Artist & Photographer

Calvin Hollywood is a digital artist, photographer, Photoshop trainer and author from Germany. He's a photography based artist who focuses on getting the perfect shot with Photoshop. In addition, he...VIEW FULL BIO»

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