There’s a specific kind of editing paralysis that hits when you’re staring at a folder of 80 portrait images and you know, deep down, that your retouching process is going to eat your entire afternoon. I’ve been there. I spent years building Lightroom workflows designed to get me out of that trap, and somewhere along the way I started paying close attention to how working portrait photographers structure their Photoshop side of things, not just the catalog management and global adjustments, but the actual per-image muscle memory.
Watch the full tutorial on YouTube
In this The Portrait System tutorial, Sue Bryce walks through the Photoshop techniques she reaches for on every portrait shoot. Sue is a Photoshop-first photographer who built her entire workflow in RAW and Photoshop before Lightroom was even a widespread option, so her approach is lean, deliberate, and shaped by years of working with clients who expect results fast. What struck me most is how few tools she actually relies on. It’s not about having every plugin installed. It’s about knowing exactly which four or five moves get you 90% of the way there.
Whether you work primarily in Lightroom or Photoshop, the techniques here translate. Think of this as the retouching layer that sits on top of whatever global color work you’re already doing.
Step 1: Set Your Post-Production Mindset Before You Open a Single File
Sue explaining the role of post-production in the workflow
Before any tool gets touched, Sue frames the entire session around one constraint: your editing time has a direct relationship to your income. If you’re spending an hour per image, you’re not running a sustainable business. The goal she sets up front is a two-minute edit, which forces you to know exactly what you’re going to do before you do it. That means getting the exposure, white balance, and framing right in camera so your editing work is corrective, not reconstructive.
This mindset shapes everything that follows. You’re not experimenting in Photoshop. You’re executing a checklist you’ve already memorized.
Step 2: Use the Healing Brush for Skin Imperfections, Not the Spot Healing Brush
Healing brush being applied to skin texture on a portrait
Sue’s go-to for skin retouching is the Healing Brush, specifically for freckles, small scars, blemishes, and stray hairs. The distinction she draws is important: she’s not smoothing skin globally. She’s removing specific distractions that pull the viewer’s eye away from the subject’s expression. Sample a clean area of skin nearby, set the brush to a size just slightly larger than the spot you’re targeting, and click once. Don’t paint. Single clicks preserve more texture than dragging does.
For stray hairs crossing the face or background, she uses the same tool rather than switching to something more complex. Keeping it to one or two tools for skin work is the whole point. The less you toggle, the faster you move.
Step 3: Clone Stamp the Background Clean
Clone stamp tool being used on a plain background area
Where the Healing Brush handles skin, the Clone Stamp handles backgrounds. Sue reaches for it to clean up any marks, shadows, or texture inconsistencies in a plain backdrop. The key setting here is opacity. Drop it to 80-90% rather than leaving it at 100%, which helps the cloned area blend without creating an obvious flat patch that looks airbrushed.
Sample from an area of the background that matches both the tone and the direction of light, not just the closest nearby patch. Background lighting is rarely perfectly even, so cloning from the wrong zone will create a visible seam even if the texture matches.
Step 4: Dodge and Burn the Eyes
Dodge tool being applied to eye area to add brightness and contrast
Eye retouching is where Sue says she spends the most intentional time. The dodge tool goes on the whites of the eyes and the catchlights to lift brightness, while burn goes on the iris ring and the lash line to deepen contrast. Work on a separate layer set to Soft Light and filled with 50% gray, which lets you dodge and burn non-destructively and dial the layer opacity back if you’ve pushed it too far.
The range setting on the Dodge tool should be Highlights for the whites and the Burn tool should be set to Shadows for the iris. Midtones on either tool tends to flatten things out rather than adding dimension. Small brush, low exposure setting (10-15%), and build it up gradually.
Step 5: Use the Warp Tool for Body Contouring Instead of Liquify
Warp tool selected with a portion of the image highlighted for reshaping
This is the technique I kept coming back to after watching the tutorial. Sue’s argument against Liquify is practical and hard to dispute: Liquify bends pixels directly inside the image layer, which means the distortion is baked in and visible if you push it even slightly too far. The Warp tool, used on a duplicated selection placed on its own layer, moves pixels on a separate layer entirely. You then erase the edges of that layer with a soft brush to feather it back into the original, so the transformation blends naturally.
The process works like this. Select the area you want to reshape using a loose Lasso selection with a feathered edge (around 20-30px), copy and paste it as a new layer, then go to Edit, Transform, Warp. Push the mesh gently in the direction you want. Then take a soft eraser at around 40% opacity and work around the edges of the pasted layer until it disappears seamlessly into the background image. The result is cleaner because fewer total pixels are being distorted, and you can throw the layer away entirely if you change your mind.
Step 6: Fix Background Gradients with a Gradient Layer
Hard horizontal line visible in background behind portrait subject
Shooting toward a window creates a gradient problem that a lot of photographers try to fix in Lightroom with the graduated filter, and it never quite works cleanly. Sue’s method is to select the lighter portion of the background using the Magic Wand or Quick Select tool, copy it to a new layer, and then apply a gradient from the edge of the window light down to the lower, darker tone of the wall. This creates a smooth transition that removes the hard horizontal line that appears when window light cuts off behind the subject’s head.
The gradient itself should match the color temperature of the ambient light in the room. If the wall is slightly warm, sample that warm tone rather than pulling toward neutral gray, or the corrected area will read as a separate zone.
What I’d Add From My Own Workflow
Sue’s warp-over-Liquify argument clicked immediately for me because I’d already noticed something similar working in Lightroom and jumping to Photoshop for specific fixes. Any time I tried to use Liquify on an image that had already been sharpened, the warping artifacts showed up almost immediately at 100% zoom. Moving to a separate layer approach, the way Sue describes, eliminates that issue almost entirely.
The one thing I’d layer on top of her workflow is doing a final global skin tone check in Lightroom after you’re done in Photoshop. Export the retouched file back into Lightroom and use the HSL panel to make sure any healing or cloning you did didn’t shift the hue of the skin slightly. It happens more than you’d expect when you’re sampling from adjacent areas, and a 5-point hue adjustment on the Orange channel fixes it in seconds.
The single most important idea in this entire tutorial is that speed and quality aren’t opposites if you’ve committed to a small set of tools and actually mastered them. Sue runs a professional portrait business using fewer Photoshop features than most beginners think they need. That’s not a limitation. That’s a system.
Watch the full tutorial on YouTube and pay particular attention to the warp tool walkthrough. It’s the thing that will change how you approach body contouring in ways the Liquify panel never quite managed.
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