A long time ago I adopted the policy of making all my edits in Photoshop non-destructive fo rthe simple reason that I could easily go back and change something if I needed to. This slowed me down at first but as I became more adept at wielding a stylus and graphics tablet, and through the benefit of actions, experience and perseverance it is no longer true. Using the right tool for the job is also a huge help and my workflow consists of a mixture of Lightroom and Photoshop.

Earlier today I embarked on a retouch session. Nothing spectacular about that as it happens all the while. What mad this one all the more important though was that my client was off on holiday this afternoon and needed the images before she went.

Not a problem I thought as there was more than enough time to make the deadline. The images didn’t need a huge amount of work either so I easily made the deadline with hours to spare.

Then the phone rang…

“You’re going to hate this but could you rework a couple of the images for me?” began the ensuing conversation. Essentially I’d gone a little too far with the retouch and my client, although she loved the images, wanted a me to make a couple of changes before she left for the airport.

Bother more work and not much time to do it. I was more than happy to do the work for her – anything to please the client after all. But I was really worried about the time. Less than an hour to get them to her.

I actually opened the first image in Lightroom whilst still on the phone! Luckily, the requested change was very simple to do in Lightroom simply by backing off the effect of the adjustment brush. Phew. But what about the stray hair removal that I’d done in Photoshop? Easy – but only because I work non-destructively.

Non-Destructive Use of Healing Brush

I’ve found the most effective way of removing stray hairs is to use the healing brush in Photoshop. Lightroom can do it with the spot healing tool but it works on spots not lines so gets a bit cumbersome around areas of high contrast. For stray hairs, the Photoshop’s healing brush is definitely the weapon of choice. The healing brush is hardly non-destructive though. But it can be made to be if you know how. This is by no means a new technique and I certainly didn’t come up with it; but thanks to the person that did.

Step 1 – Create a new layer about the layer to be worked on and call it “heal”. Make this layer the current layer

Step 2 – Select the Healing Brush [J] and check the box that says “Current and Below” This tells the healing brush to sample the current layer and all those below it when healing the image. The result will only affect the current layer though so the effect can easily be removed simply through “undo” or even through the eraser tool to rub out the pixels on the “heal”layer.

Step 3 – Heal the image

Back to the Rework…

Getting back to the story, once I’d made the necessary changes to the adjustment brush in Lightroom by selecting the pin and changing the settings I exported the image as I had previously (thank heavens for presets!!) and pasted it into the Photoshop file between the original image (background layer in my case) and the “heal” layer.

There is a potential pitfall here – if there had been any contrast or exposure changes to the new image I wouldn’t have been able to simply drop it into the PSD file. If you do this, you’ll need to check the areas that were previously healed to make sur they still match seamlessly. If not they’ll need to be re-healed.

So what does all this add up to?

A happy client 🙂 I made the edits, rendered the images and uploaded them all within the space of an hour. My client was happy and I have a lovely text message thanking me for the work I’d done. I was easily able to accommodate this request and turn it around quickly because of the workflow. Had I worked destructively I would have needed to start reworking the images again from scratch, doubling the time it took me to complete the overall job if indeed I still had the originals to work from.

Thus by using a combination of the right tool and non-destructuve editing techniques my workflow has not only delivered a set of images that my client is happy with but has also allowed me to provide a level of service that would make future bookings and word of mouth referrals more likely.

You can’t beat a happy client 🙂 🙂

Images courtesy of Gavin Thorn Photography