Pictures of Life wrote:
Fair question, but mastering retouching requires identifying what kind of retouching, or what kind of photography you want to pursue.  And mastering may take a lifetime, so you may want to decide what is good enough and get there first.  If you look at the Sue Bryce crowd, they produce decent quality, and very profitable images with a specific style.  Is the retouching fantastic, or just consistent?  Some of their best work could be shot with a $400 camera lens combo, 10 minutes of editing with a automated plug in and another 5 min of trendy filters.  But their clients are middle aged women who don't want good skin detail, but love a pseudo fantasy textured image. 
     If you want a really good map of how to get somewhere, choose a specific destination first.  Beauty magazine edits are completely different from pin up.  The 'best' edits use the model's skin, but some of the 'best' images use fake skin.  A successful photographer may use the quickest editing process to maximize output.  A successful artist may spend forever on one image, and change things dramatically during the process.  I like the concept of a craftsman who has a clear idea of the finished product, and efficiently and adaptively uses several skills to get there. That pretty much describes Aaron Nace from Phlearn, but you may decide that you aren't interested in creating work like his. 
    Just reading the MM retouchers forum routinely will help you get info that you won't encounter otherwise. There are fantastic retouchers here like Natalia who gives great advice and she has some videos.   The advice from Burn the Ashes is perfect, but I found that after spending a LOT of time getting good at fine detail editing that I wanted more of a finished look, which is faster, easier and generally covers up the fine details.  I would have saved a lot of time, and made more progress by starting with the stylistic editing, then learning the detail stuff.  Check out Phlearn youtube - What should be done First.
    Good luck

Thank you

Koray wrote:
here you go:
https://www.youtube.com/user/KrunoStifter/videos

I found Kruno's videos to be inferior to Natalia's. Also inferior to Gry Garness.

For a new retoucher, I'd suggest this book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1138812471/

It was invaluable to me in that it made me aware of many techniques that I could examine at my own pace. Once I started watching tutorials, I was able to follow them much more easily.

Mask Photo wrote:

I found Kruno's videos to be inferior to Natalia's. Also inferior to Gry Garness.

For a new retoucher, I'd suggest this book:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1138812471/

It was invaluable to me in that it made me aware of many techniques that I could examine at my own pace. Once I started watching tutorials, I was able to follow them much more easily.

I don't think it's fair to say about inferiority when comparing these three. I happen to have the video's of all three of them. They have similar ways of doing things and the differences are very minimal.

Personally I think Natalia is very good, but slightly more technical than the other two. At some point e.g. she talks about her high-pass and uses multiply/divide by 3, instead of eyeballing, it works for her but it might not for everyone.

I like Gry's dvd for the absolute essentials, such as understanding skin color, selections, masking, however, she didn't use very inspiring images (included on dvd), so for me it was a tough sit.

I like Kruno's videos because of the sequence, he tells you what he did in the previous first, and also uses images that are actually the images many photographers would like to shoot (depending on your interest of course).

IMO it's not about superiority, but some teachers connect better with you than others. To the OP, the best tip I can give you is to watch a couple of video tuts by different people, and then just conclude which ones connects with you best (and even on which parts, like I mentioned above for myself)

RINALDI wrote:
I don't think it's fair to say about inferiority when comparing these three. I happen to have the video's of all three of them. They have similar ways of doing things and the differences are very minimal.

this isn't about fairness; this is about usefulness.

barepixels wrote:
can you post the actual links where one can buy these dvd listed above?

Natalia's and Krunoslav's videos.

Gry Garness If you were not aware, Gry Garness passed away recently--very sad news.