Using Lightroom Only for Retouching and Beauty Work

Hi, welcome to my blog. Today I wanted to offer a Lightroom tutorial that shows you how you can do your retouching and beauty work completely inside Lightroom. Lightroom is a very powerful program that has many of the tools that Camera Raw has, but it’s just not on a level playing field when compared to Photoshop. This does not mean that you can’t end up with a similar retouching result in Lightroom as you can in Photoshop. However it does mean you will spend a little more time working in Lightroom for the final result you might be looking for.

My approach to retouching in Lightroom is simple. I use my own presets to achieve a starting point, then tweak the result for each specific image. Also I use many adjustment brush presets that I created to speed up my retouching workflow when working inside Lightroom. In Photoshop there are special tools like the spot healing brush where you simply click and drag your skin blemishes away (a very fast solution). In Lightroom these speciality tools just don’t exist. But not to worry, I have created my very own set of tools that allow me similar function. I have created 10, “TSP Portrait Retouching” brushes that I use to speed things up.

In the video below I show you how I use my development preset and brushes presets on an actual image. These special preset tools allow me to do a complete retouch inside Lightroom without having to tweak every slider or setting to achieve the final results I am after. If you would like my version 1. TSP Portrait Retouching Tools, please drop me a line. I do plan to offer the presets for sale as a complete system for use with various types of photography in the near future. But to my loyal followers, you can have them for free.

This is before any retouching was done.




A Close Up Before




This is the image after, using Lightroom 4 only to retouch.




A CloseUp After,

Below is a Movie to show you how I use Lightroom for Retouching and Beauty Work!