There are a lot of excellent photography/retouching videos on YouTube, but today I’m going to focus on a few professionals at the top of the food chain who have produced long-form video enrichment courses for photographers. Most of these instructional videos came across my social media feeds and they all seemed solid enough for me to want them.

The first purchase on advanced photography that I made was an eBook back in 2009 called Digital Retouching by Gry Garness. A few years later, I got her amazing follow-up DVD Beauty Retouching Techniques in Photoshop. I learned an immense amount about retouching from Gry who was a master of the craft and an excellent teacher. The exact techniques she demonstrated are out of date due to software changes, but the general ideas and workflows are still sound.

In 2019, I was lucky enough to catch an Annie Leibovitz retrospective in downtown LA. When I saw that she had an online class-I had to have it!  A few years ago, I reviewed her MasterClass course Annie Leibovitz Teaches Photography, which is worth the price of admission.

More recently, I wanted to take a deep dive into Lightroom so I bought the course, Intro to Adobe Lightroom by Chris Knight.  I watched the entire tutorial, but decided to stick with my Adobe Bridge/ACR/Photoshop workflow instead of using Lightroom Classic. That’s nothing against the presenter, I just feel like Lightroom is too bulky for me and I don’t particularly like how it manages files.

I really liked Fashion Photography and Retouching with Michael Woloszynowicz. He goes through several photoshoots and retouch sessions and talks you through each step. In addition to the 15 hr. course videos, it includes an eBook, a few Photoshop actions, and some of his high-res sample photo files.