It’s common that even as I act as a freelancer before hiring independent of my previous work samples, companies or photographers don’t jump and hire you. Especially photographers when they try to recruit you one of the questions I get from time to time is “where did you learn retouching from and how do you improve your skills?” at first these questions were a bit strange for me, I was thinking at the time “why do they care? If my work is good enough for their project, why do they care where I got it.”

Later on, I understood that what they want to learn if I use the market standard techniques and keep myself up to date. How someone starts to learn Photoshop may differ. Still, I got to start leaning it because I was a serious hobbyist. I wanted more from my images after the film was developed (yes film, the brown or dark cellophane material where the image is recorded chemically). I didn’t have a dark room and didn’t have such a space at home. I already knew it’s possible to scan and edit images on desktop software and in those days it was the wild west and I could easily find a pirated copy of Photoshop, I guess it was version 4 at the time. I made my sister purchase a film scanner (Nikon Coolscan) from the UK as she was living there.

I had minimal knowledge of what can be done the software but learned the basics pretty fast. The first wave came with books. Internet was a limited source at the time for what I was looking for, but Amazon was there, and I kept on ordering books and dive into them. What I can tell even the post office wasn’t able to carry the books I’ve ordered and leaving me slips to pick the sacks from the delivery center, which I did. Of course, you can develop yourself up to a point by reading and following instructions on the books, and due to my job I was able to afford face to face classes, I was lucky to take the first class from Natalie Taffarel. Then came Andreas Bitesnich’s courses in Vienna. They covered both photography and retouching. In time my focus shifted towards more to retouching while I still take photos and try to understand lighting techniques best I can.

Traveling to some country for a week or two plus staying at hotels is an expensive endeavor; very few people could afford it, and almost no full-time professional (photographer or retoucher) could afford such expenses. Therefore, following that, CDs and downloadable courses started. With the Internet speeds of the time, once you bought a class, you had to wait ten hours or so to download them. Those are followed by Youtube channels; some were free. Some were showing a part of their paid tutorials. I have already provided social media groups and Facebook groups to follow today’s article is the best free resources to keep your image post-production skills as sharp as a samurai blade.

Therefore my most recommended free online resources are;

• Adobe Creative Cloud: This is not the Adobe Creative Cloud that we pay a fortune every month but a free Youtube channel that provides daily content for users of Adobe Creative Cloud, including Photoshop. Content is engaging, and there are some mini-competitions (without any prize or even score) that may help you see how well you’re doing. Plus it’s not only Photoshop but the whole suite, including other packages such as Dimension, which I’m trying to get the hang of it at the moment.

• Photoshop Training Channel: Classes are provided by Jesus Ramirez, whom you might see from time to time at Adobe Creative Channel as well. Most of the time, classes are for medium to high-end users.

• Piximperfect: PiXimperfect, hosted by Unmesh Dinda, is a free resource for learning Photoshop. Piximperfect provides classes for all Photoshop user levels.

• Capture One Pro: If you are a serious retouched, most likely, you are using Capture One Pro as the RAW converter or seriously considering it. Phase One (owner of Capture One) holds regular webinars with various retouchers and photographers on different techniques of this software.

• Pratik Naik: He’s well known in the industry with his social presence and many many tutorials across the various platform, and with his down to earth attitude, the visual industry loves Pratik. He hosts his series with an extremely calm voice, his beauty, and fashion retouching tutorials are more focused on mid to advanced level image editors.

• Michael Woloszynowicz is a beauty and fashion photographer with a tough last name to read. He has a perfect editing technique, and besides his paid courses on the various platform, he provides free tutorials on Youtube on image editing using Photoshop, Capture One Pro, and other plugins.

• Pro Edu (formerly RGG Edu) is a paid tutorial platform on photography and image post-production. Their tutorials are one of the best available and probably the most expensive one compared to other online tutorials. To promote these tutorials, they share excerpts from these tutorials, where you may catch a few tricks unless you don’t want to pay for an online course at the moment.

• Tutvid: Provides original content on Adobe Creative Cloud from Illustrator to Photoshop. At the time of this article, for some reason, the host Nathaniel Dodson hasn’t posted any new class in the last nine months though still, his old content is a gem.

• Glyn Dewis: Glyn is a master portraiture editor and photographer from the UK, plus he does painterly looking composites and one of the few hosts that share printing techniques.

• Retouching Academy: It’s not a channel that posts regularly, but you might find their shared content if you’re into beauty retouching.

• Clinton Lofthouse: Is a post-production artist with painterly and attention-grabbing composites. As he recently became one of Pro Edu instructors, I believe the quality of his free tutorials may go up as well.

• Phlearn: Aaron Nace is one of the first that came with Youtube classes concept and tying those courses with the paid class idea. I believe for a time he was the lone cowboy on this on Youtube. I used to love his classes and watch every class couple of times. Then came others, plus most of his tutorials are for beginner to mid-level. Therefore Phlearn would be the right place for newbies.

• Photoshop Faze: Youtube channel of Sef McCullough, a well-known commercial post-production artist for brands such as Nike and a few other top brands and instructors at Pro Edu. He rarely posts at this channel, but it would be wise to keep in radar for some new tricks.

• Dansky: This channel is focused on Adobe Creative Suite, including Photoshop; therefore, not all content will be for photo editing, but he shares different techniques and effecting VFX that you can use in the commercial post-production workflow.

• Workphlo: This channel is focused on still life photography and post-production. Therefore if products are your thing, this is the channel you should be following.

• botvidsson: If you enjoyed Workphlo you would probably enjoy Botvidsson, a commercial still-life photographer from Sweden

• Photigy: One more channel that is set up to promote the paid still life photography and editing content. Still, content shared would be interesting for any still-life image editor.

• The Bite Shot: If food photography and editing are your things and you haven’t even heard The Bite Shot, then you missed a lot.

• We Eat Together: From the name you guessed it, Skyler shows how to produce fantastic food photography images from the production to post-production.

• Paul Trani: If you follow Adobe Creative Cloud channel on Youtube, you’ll regularly see Paul Trani. His works are more on the artistic side rather than commercial work. You can still apply those techniques in your commercial work too.

• Natalia Tafarrel: Twitch is a medium mainly for gamers, being a gamer maybe that’s the reason Natalia prefers to use this channel and she is the only retouch master who shows her tricks on Twitch. If you can adjust your timing to evenings of Buenos Aires you may catch her live shows too. Natalia is a true master in beauty and fashion retouch.

There are two more channels that I should mention that have nothing to do with photo editing; The Futur, The Jonathan Stark Show, and Greg Hickman. These three channels focus on the business side, from finding new clients to negotiation and closing deals. I can’t emphasize how important these are, and even if you are the best retouched in the world without proper business management, you’ll fail big time. Therefore I highly recommend you to follow and watch their free and consider paid courses and materials.