A fashion image that would have taken four hours to retouch a few years ago now takes minutes. Not because the standards have dropped. Because the workflow has changed.
Lenworth Johnson has been photographing at the editorial and commercial level for years working with top Vogue models and collaborating with world-renowned celebrity stylists from luxury fashion houses like Gucci and Dior. When he demonstrated his complete retouching workflow live in a Retouch4me webinar (which you can watch now), the response was immediate: people wanted to know exactly how he does it, step by step.
This is that workflow.
The foundation: Capture One as the selection and colour stage
Lenworth works in Capture One for all high-end shoots. It is his primary editing environment for selection, colour, and tonal work before retouching begins.
After a shoot, he moves through his images quickly, applying a 5-star rating to anything that catches his eye as a potential keeper. He is looking for hero shots — the primary image that will anchor the delivery — and supporting frames that work alongside it.
Once the selects are identified, he applies a preset at this stage. For his Los Angeles fashion work, this is what he calls his LA location preset: a colour and tone profile calibrated for that shooting environment. Applied here, before moving to Photoshop, it sets the aesthetic baseline for every image in the set. The retouching that follows in Photoshop works within that established look rather than fighting against it.
This sequencing matters. Colour decisions made in Capture One are non-destructive and fast to apply across an entire set. Retouching decisions made in Photoshop are more granular and image-specific. By separating the two stages, each tool does what it is best at.
Opening in Photoshop: the first step is a duplicate layer
When a selected image moves from Capture One to Photoshop, the first action is consistent: duplicate the background layer.
This is not a habit or superstition. It is a non-destructive working practice. To make sure the original pixel data is preserved and accessible at every stage. If a client requests a different finish, or the retouching needs to be revised, the base is always there.
For each of the tools used – there is a duplicate layer like Dodge&Burn, Heal and other.
The Retouch4me Photoshop Panel and Lenworth’s favourite tools:
- Heal — addresses skin imperfections, blemishes, and temporary irregularities. The result reads as clean skin, not processed skin.
- Dodge & Burn — enhances the natural volume and dimensionality of the face. Adds depth without adding contrast artificially.
- Portrait Volume — works with the three-dimensional structure of the face, reinforcing shadow and highlight relationships for a more sculpted, natural look.
- Skin Tone — normalises uneven skin tone across the face. Particularly useful for images with mixed lighting or where colour casts have affected skin rendering.
- Eye Vessel — reduces visible blood vessels in the whites of the eyes for a cleaner, more alert appearance.
- Eye Brilliance — adds a subtle luminosity and clarity that brings the image forward without adding artificial sharpness or glow.
“An image like this would probably take me four hours to really edit back in the day. And then with this, it is in minutes.”
The result appears as the duplicated layers immediately. You can adjust its opacity and settings in the panel itself or go into any of the created layers and modify its intensity. The panel can remember the settings via “Saved presets” and you can always retouch the entire series with “Batch retouch”, which means that once a look is dialled in for a particular client or type of work, it can be replicated consistently across every image in the set.
Opacity: where the final look is calibrated
After running the panel, Lenworth makes a single layer-level adjustment that is often more important than any individual tool setting: he dials down the opacity of the retouching layer.
For commercial fashion work — editorial, advertising, client delivery — he typically sets it to around 49%.
At 100%, the retouching is visible. The skin is clean, the eyes are bright, the volume is enhanced. At 49%, those effects are still present but integrated. The result reads as the natural version of the person, not the retouched version.
This is the distinction between retouching that is seen and retouching that is felt. At the commercial and editorial level, the goal is always the latter.
The opacity slider is also where Lenworth adapts the workflow to different clients and different briefs. A beauty campaign may warrant 60%. A lifestyle brand may want 35%. The tools stay the same. The calibration changes to match the aesthetic established in pre-production.
“Once you nail your taste down, you can set it up and go real quick. No longer are the days when we spend hours and lose a night’s sleep retouching.”
Finalising: merge, sharpen, export
Once the retouching layer is at the right opacity, Lenworth merges it with the base layer to produce a single clean file. From there, he applies Topaz Sharpen as a final step — output sharpening calibrated for the delivery format.
The finished image moves back to Capture One for export. From Capture One it goes to a delivery folder — Dropbox, Google Drive, or whichever image delivery system the client uses.
For clients who use MyShot or similar cloud delivery platforms, the image is delivered directly from there with the correct file naming and folder structure already in place. No additional organisation step.
The complete process from culled and colour-corrected file to delivery-ready image takes minutes, not hours. And because the preset in Capture One and the panel settings in Photoshop are saved, the next image in the set moves through the same process without additional setup.
Why the workflow is built this way
Every element of Lenworth’s workflow reflects a choice about where creative energy should be spent.
Capture One handles colour and selection because it is the right tool for broad, fast, consistent adjustments across a set. Photoshop handles retouching because it is the right environment for precise, layer-based work on individual images. The Retouch4me PS Panel handles the retouching itself because it produces professional results in a single pass without requiring manual frequency separation, Dodge & Burn layers built by hand, or hours of skin work.
The workflow is not about speed for its own sake. It is about directing time toward the decisions that actually require a photographer’s judgement — selection, calibration, opacity — and automating everything else.
The result is a delivery-ready image that looks like the work of a photographer who spent four hours on it, produced in a fraction of that time.
For working photographers with real clients and real deadlines, that is not a small thing.
Lenworth Johnson covers the complete shoot process — from brief to delivery — in his free Retouch4me webinar.
Watch the recording and try the Retouch4me Photoshop Panel and all tools free at retouch4.me: https://retouch4.me/for-beginners