Workflow & Automation
How I Use Photoshop Actions to Cut a 3-Hour Retouch Down to 20 Minutes
Last year I timed myself doing a standard skin retouch on a portrait. Frequency separation, a curves adjustment, dodge and burn setup, a few sharpening layers, export at 2048px for web. I had done this exact sequence probably a thousand times. It took me 47 minutes, and about 38 of those minutes were pure muscle memory, the same clicks in the same order every single time. That was the moment I finally sat down and recorded it as an action.