15 Best Digital Retouchers in the World

Location: Houston, USA
Trademark style: Color toning

Pratik Naik is an editorial and commercial retoucher. He is also a founder of Solstice Retouch, which is a studio that helps photographers with high-end commercial projects. Among regular clients are Joey Lawrence, Lara Jade, and Jeremy Cowart.

Pratik has been working as a photo retoucher for over 15 years. Being one of the most skilled professionals in the digital retouching world, he willingly shares his knowledge and curates different online photography communities. Besides, he creates Ps panels and toolkits for his colleagues.

If your current photo editing skills are far from what the top retouchers offer, don’t get upset. You can keep developing in this sphere at a convenient pace, while experts at WeEdit.Photos will take care of your images. We will analyze photos and make all the needed adjustments to achieve a perfect look without going overboard. We work quickly and charge a fair price. The list of our services is extensive – from natural and basic image retouching, to advanced magazine corrections with a special focus on individual wishes.

Location: Los Angeles, USA
Trademark style: Tonal sculpting

Amy Dresser is a freelance photo retoucher, who frequently cooperates with world-known brands and celebrities. She mainly specializes in retouching portrait images, covering all the nuances this genre includes. Amy has participated in campaigns organized by Pepsi, Sony, Target, PUMA, Nestlé, Converse, and Taco Bell.

Her works frequently appear in such magazines as Time, Entertainment Weekly, Maxim, and New York Times Magazine. She has retouched portraits of Tom Cruise, Hilary Swank, Gwen Stefani, Snoop Dogg, Jennifer Connelly, Katy Perry, Jessica Simpson and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Thanks to her signature style and unique perception of ordinary details, many novices look up to Amy while delving into the world of photo retouching. She frequently provides an expert opinion on photography-related topics, being a guest lecturer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Luminance Talks, multiple universities, and art colleges. Amy also organizes online and live seminars, including a traveling workshop series in Australia.

Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Trademark style: WACOM tablet retouching

Natalia Taffarel from Buenos Aires, Argentina is a master of high-end art retouching. She has the extraordinary ability to notice and draw attention away from unnecessary details, to direct your look to the flavor of the picture. Her skills in the Photoshop program are excellent and she has become a Certified Adobe Expert, and built up a strong client base.

There is hardly another photo retoucher, who is so fond of colors and details. Natalia believes that every detail should be treated with special care and viewers can truly grasp the essence of a scene depicted, when all elements are accurately retouched. She worked with Wacom, a company producing the best tablets for photo editing aimed at creating helpful resources for photographers with a focus on color theory.

Location: Moscow, Russia
Trademark style: Advertising campaign retouching

This Photoshop retoucher has been providing her services for more than 10 years. Nata likes improving posed pictures taken in interesting locations and with models wearing unique costumes. She has worked with Maybelline NY, Sephora, Nike, Chanel, Pandora, to name a few. You can see images she retouched in international media, including Harper’s Bazaar, Dreamingless, Elléments, and Scorpio Jin.

Similar to any other photographic retoucher, Nata has guidelines she follows in every project. This includes attention to detail, accuracy, focus on aesthetics and the latest trends. Besides, she is fully in love with her work, so no wonder 98% of her clients are satisfied with the outcome.

Location: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Trademark style: Preserving skin texture

Maximiliano Ricciotti is a photographer and a high-end retoucher, currently residing in La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina. At the moment, he is also a student at the UNLP the Bachelor of Audiovisual Arts, getting the degree with guidance to Direction of Photography. Maximiliano is passionate about taking images and improving them, so he dedicates lots of his time to mastering new techniques and honing all types of skills.

This photo retoucher claims that you can end up with a perfect picture only if you pay solid attention to detail, contrast, and subtleties of all objects. It is impossible to get a great image if you don’t use your full potential. Besides, Maximiliano highlights the importance of light, texture, and form in every shot. People like him for his amazing photo manipulation ideas that never repeat twice.

Location: NYC, USA
Trademark style: Frequency separation technique

Dani Diamond is a prolific retoucher and photographer. He regularly participates in projects organized by world-known brands. Dani’s name became recognizable globally thanks to his perfectly lit portraits and high-end boutique fashion photos. In addition to the practical part of his profession, he also conducts educational work by sharing knowledge on shooting and image editing.

While retouching portraits, Dani likes using the Frequency Separation method to correct blotchy skin. He encourages his colleagues to zoom in and out all the time to better see which skin areas require additional handling. Dani uses several PCs while retouching photos. His second computer for photo editing has the “navigator” open to the full screen. He thinks that every enthusiast dreaming of entering the group of the best digital retouchers should never skip the Dodge&Burn technique, as it works remarkably for creating an accurate transition between highlights and shadows.

Location: United Kingdom
Trademark style: Non-destructive retouching techniques

Monica yearns to be the best digital retoucher and does all possible to stand out from the crowd. She was born in Catalonia but got itchy feet and moved to the UK, where she lives now. She receives orders from model agencies and magazines from different parts of the world. Her services are really in high demand.

Monica has been retouching images in Ps for 15+ years. She perfectly understands what we mean when we’re talking about great composition and proper lighting. Thanks to her persistent work and non-stop development, she keeps amazing worldwide audience with terrific photos that receive major awards.

Location: Salvan, Switzerland
Trademark style: Retouching hair with brushes

Quentin is a beauty and product photographer from Switzerland. He got interested in photo retouching while learning English in NY and a simple hobby quickly evolved into a true passion. He fully immersed himself into a new but fascinating world and soon became one of the top retouchers. Quentin states that photo processing combines everything he loves – art, creativity, and technology.

Being an ambassador of Capture One and Photoshop, Quentin can share lots of useful info on how to use these programs. In fact, his workflow in Ps is always divided into 4 steps. First off, he deals with all visible defects and improves textures. Next, he starts fixing lighting issues and smooths transitions between highlights and shadows with the help of Dodge & Burn.
Sometimes, he moves his color correction work to Capture One, but makes fine tweaks at the first stage in Photoshop. The final step includes using the Liquify tool and raising sharpness.

Location: Los Angeles, USA
Trademark style: Retouching using curves

Viktor Fejes is a reputable high-end photographic retoucher with an international clientele. His list of clients includes many famed brands and celebrities. Viktor has been using Photoshop and other photo editing software for photographers since he was an 8-year-old boy. Now, he is the Head Retoucher and Founder of GILD Studios, a prestigious boutique retouching studio.

Though Viktor knows the most complicated image processing techniques, he adheres to a fine line between realism and over-photoshopping, never crossing the border. He performs accurate skin retouching, color grading, and detail enhancement. Moreover, he states that every retoucher should just improve a picture instead of totally overhauling it, which is his main credo. Viktor excels at keeping the character of his subject, which is a challenging thing to do.

Location: London, UK
Trademark style: Commercial retouching for makeup brands

Amira embarked on the photo retouching path in 2007 and since then has never regretted her decision. Image retouching has become an integral part of her life and her motivation for self-education is only growing.

Amira cooperates with famous photographers, companies, creative directors, and brands. She has worked with Kylie Cosmetics, Kylie Skin, Fenty Beauty, KKW Beauty and more.

Location: Los-Angeles, USA
Trademark style: Cosmetic industry retouching

Combining her work of a beauty & cosmetic product photographer and a retouching artist, Julia manages to bring to life her creative ideas and then give them a polished look in the form of pictures. She lives in Los Angeles but travels to other countries to broaden her knowledge in Commercial Photography (Melbourne, Australia).

She isn’t a solo player and believes that only like-minded people working together can create a fantastic project. As a photographer, Julia is a proponent of a visually balanced capture that requires minimal processing. When she retouches photos, Julia does her best to leave no traces, while elevating the beauty of a shot.

Due to her solid understanding of makeup, lighting, and retouching, she successfully runs Avenue Retouching Agency. This is a post-production and consulting service in the beauty ecosystem that is aimed at cosmetics brands that need high-quality images of their products.

Location: Berlin, Germany
Trademark style: Natural retouching

Zoë resigned from a company where she occupied the position of a graphic designer and followed her dream of becoming a photographer and a photo retoucher. Having invested lots of effort and time into a new sphere, she managed to achieve success and become a high-paid specialist.

She lives in Berlin, Germany, but her works are known far from abroad. Being a completely self-taught artist, Zoë has founded a prosperous studio with a large client base including L’Oréal Paris, Ogilvy and Etsy, and prestigious magazines like Vogue, ELLE and Harper’s BAZAAR.

Zoë frequently chooses female empowerment as a central topic in her photo sessions. As a retoucher, she stands out with beautiful lighting and natural image processing. She actively shares her knowledge with anyone interested on the YouTube channel. Besides, Zoë works as a retouching educator for Capture One. She is sure that every person can change his/her life and encourages her followers not to be afraid of possible difficulties.

Location: Dnipro, Ukraine
Trademark style: Dodge & burn technique

Evgenia has been working as a commercial photo retoucher for 11 years remotely. It’s more than just a job for her, as it all started with a genuine interest in online photo editors. She says that photo retouching is not just a set of mechanical movements; it is vision, taste, and relevance.

Evgenia shares her knowledge on her informative YouTube channel. You can subscribe to it not to miss information about new retouching techniques and trends. Her works are featured on the covers of famous publications like Lucy’s.

Location: London, United Kingdom
Trademark style: Makeup retouching

Desiree Mattsson, a beauty photographer and retoucher, is known for her exquisite and tech-inspired beauty retouching, which is best represented by Pat McGrath’s Labs makeup line. She collaborated with numerous high-end magazines and cosmetic company’s campaigns, including Vogue, Vanity Fair, and Elle.

Location: Radanovo, Bulgaria
Trademark style: Beauty close-ups

Stefka is an experienced beauty and fashion photographic retoucher. She has a master’s degree in Fine Arts from National Art Academy in Sofia Bulgaria. While studying at the Academy, she learned about Photoshop and it has become her main working tool since then. Rather quickly, Stefka understood that she can transform her love for painting into a new and intriguing field of art.

Stefka is particularly interested in retouching beauty close-up photos, but can also improve images for catalogs, advertising, fashion projects, etc. She feels very inspired when retouching skin, makeup, and miniature details.

She believes that every photo should entice with its beauty without prompting viewers to think about where, how, and if any changes have been made. She tries to preserve as many details as possible slightly improving their look.