Friends

I started with the below photo:

Here I highlighted all areas with issues. When it comes to retouching, this wasn't a particularly difficult photo, although not all issues have been highlighted.

Step 1: Retouch

Using my favorite tool, Affinity Photo, I created an empty layer above the main image. Next, I grouped them to have them nicely organized in one place for easy on/off toggling.

This will be a layer containing all my retouching work. When using any of the repair brushes, I just have to make sure that the source is always Current layer & Below.

This approach allows nondestructive editing. This means that all retouches will be visible, but if you wish to edit them or delete them entirely, you are free to do so. The original stays untouched. After retouching, the layer looked like this (I've put it next to the original, so you can follow what has happened).

Step 2: Remove colour

It is sufficient to create a Black & White adjustment layer above my retouch group, to remove all colour.

And again, the best part is, it's 100% editable. The original is monochromatic, so that's probably not the most useful feature, but still. It's there. Just double-click the layer, and you'll see a colour mixer setup popping up.

This is the final retouched image:

Step 3: Colouring

Now the fun part 🙂 I started by adding a Recolour layer. As always with Affinity, this is non-destructive, so I can always go back and change it.

After adding a Recolour layer, I added a mask. Then inverted it. This meant temporary removal of my newly added colour. Then I just started painting on the mask with a white brush. Remember the masking rule "White reveals, black conceals"? So if you painted too much or in a place you weren't supposed to have painted, just change the brush colour to black and remove your colour from the layer. It's that simple.

My finished layer set looks like this:

Step 4: Final touches

As a little final touch I decided to add some clouds, that weren't there originally.

I chose layer overlay with 75%

and the sky is placed inbetween my colouring layers and the black and white adjustmen, just above retouching layer.

This placement allowed the sky to nicely blend into the original texture of the photo, while at the same time it did not collide with any of my colouring layers.

Step 5: Final image

Share it on social media if you liked it. Cheers :)