Retouch4me Heal Review

Retouch4me is a recent arrival on the image editing market, offering a range of plug-ins powered by AI. The plug-ins are targeted at people photographers who want improved results quickly but without the over-sculpted, plastic look that some portrait dedicated software can produce. For this review, we tried the Heal app.

To check out what’s on offer and to download free demo versions, go to http://retouch4.me.

Retouch4me Features

Seventeen plug-ins are on offer with improving people photographs the main aim. Three are free and the remaining 14 cost from $124: Dust, Heal, Eye Vessels, Eye Brilliance, Portrait Volumes, Skin Tone, White Teeth, Fabric, Skin Mask, Mattifier and Color Match cost $124 each. Clean Backdrop and Dodge & Burn cost $149 each. The three free apps are the Photoshop panel, Frequency Separation and Color Match.

All are available for Windows and macOS as free demo versions. Once purchased, you get three keys for different devices and free updates.

Each app has a specific role in improving people photographs and is summed up on the Retouch4me website, but their names are quite explanatory. White Teeth detects teeth and makes them whiter and brighter, and Mattifier finds glossy, oily areas of skin and restores them to give a more natural colour. Dodge & Burn needs more explanation and does not give contrast control as you might expect, but evens out bumpy skin, veiny hands and feet.

All of these are people picture-adjusting skills, but there are apps for inanimate objects as well. Fabric irons out creases and wrinkles in clothes, and Clean Backdrop removes dirt even more than a studio background.

The key thing with each plug-in is that they perform automatically, and while you can fine-tune results, you may not need to. 

Each plug-in can be used on a device, or there is the option of Cloud Retouch.

With Cloud Retouch, you get a full suite of 10 apps with free updates and buy the package that best suits your needs. The Basic package costs $20 a month with 200 credits, and the Pro package is 500 credits for $35 a month. The top of the line is the Business package, which is $90 a month with 1500 credits.

Once you have created an account, this is the page for buying and downloading the Retouch4me apps.

Retouch4me Heal Key Features

For this review, I picked the Retouch4me Heal app, a blemish retouching software. This plug-in automatically detects problem skin areas and resolves them to give results with a natural skin appearance, which is a key selling point of the Heal app. Some portrait editing apps can give an unreal look, but Heal is written to give professional results with a single click.

The app installation is straightforward, and it can be used as a standalone program, a Photoshop plug-in under its filter menu, or an external Raw processor in Adobe Lightroom and Capture One. 

For Photoshop, Retouch4me offers a free downloadable panel that shows all apps so they can be quickly brought into play. Batch processing is available using Photoshop’s Action feature. The Retouch4me website offers plenty of support, including how to record a Photoshop Action to enable batch work.

The Retouch4me apps have a similar look and functionality.

Retouch4me Heal Ease Of Use & Performance

I used Heal as a standalone program, through Photoshop via the free panel and the filters drop-down menu, and in Lightroom as an external editor. Of course, the final result is the same in each case, but the respective journeys are slightly different.

With Photoshop open and the image to be worked in view on show, the Retouch4me panel is on view. Use this, and all you have to do is hit the play next to the app’s name or use the Retouch button. A few seconds later, the image is retouched with the changes sitting above the background image on a separate layer. Check out the original and worked-on image by clicking on the layer’s eye icon next to this layer. Taking this route means there’s no option to adjust the mask or the filter’s output level.

With the brush tool active or when you adjust the Heal’s sensitivity slider, the red mask appears. Here, the white areas indicate the areas that will be retouched at level 50.

Push the Heal slider to 100, and you’ll see that the active white areas have grown, as you’d expect.

For more control in Photoshop, take the Filter drop-down menu option, but before you call up the filter, duplicate the Background layer. Now, the plug-in’s interface opens with the active image on show and by clicking and dragging the interface’s bottom right corner for a bigger view. 

Use the app directly, and images can be opened via the app’s interface, or you can click and drop the image into the interface.

The Sensitivity slider, which ranges from 0 to 100, lets you decide at which point the plug-in starts to work. The higher the value, the greater its effect. When you use the slider, the image turns red with white areas indicating where the app identified problem areas. You can magnify the image by up to 300% to check the app’s effect in close detail.

Hit the Brush at the top left, and a red mask appears with white areas showing where the app has identified areas that need help. If you move the slider either way, you can see the degree of the plug-in’s effect in real time.

In Auto human scale detection mode, the app works out whether the picture is a full-length shot, half-length portrait or a close-up head and shoulders picture. If you’re not happy with the auto setting, try the other settings and the app refreshes the active image almost instantly.

The top left of the interface has tools that let you adjust the mask, which again turns transparent red with white active areas. If the plug-in has worked on an area you prefer to be left untouched, just use the Eraser to fine-tune the mask. The size of the Eraser can be adjusted with the square bracket keys.

Once you are happy with the look you’ve achieved, hit Apply, and the actual retouching process takes a second or so with the repaired areas showing on the background copy later. If you prefer, clicking on the Make Mask option top right of the interface means the corrections are applied on the background copy layer and overwrite the image. Turn off the background in the layers palette and you can see the retouched areas.

Keeping the document with the background copy layer obviously means a significantly larger file size. The test image here was taken on the Canon EOS R5 and the full-size 8-bit TIF was 134MB, and the retouched file with layer was 214MB.

In Lightroom, you need to set up Heal as an external editor by going to Preferences>External Editing. With that done, with the appropriate image selected, go to Photo>Edit In Retouch4me. Lightroom prepares the image for editing and opens it in the app interface. From there, the procedure is as detailed above.

Taking a closer look at what Retouch4me Heal can do

Full-frame image

Original Image shown at 100%

Treated with Retouch4me Heal at level 50.

Treated with Retouch4me Heal at 100.

The Retouch4me Heal did a decent job on my sample image. Model Caitlyn has a very good complexion, but no-one has perfect skin when enlarged to 100% on a high res monitor. You can see that Retouch4me Heal at 100 produced a very good result with a level of 50 not making too much of a difference in this example. The key thing is that the app has cleaned up the complexion while keeping the skin looking natural. 

That said, while the result looked great at 100 having the potential of a stronger look might be handy in some situations.

Value For Money

The Retouch4me Heal app costs $124, so it is a significant investment for an app with a very specific role in retouching workflow. If your need is for a more detailed people photography workflow then you’ll need to think of adding a few more Retouch4me apps to your armoury. This is where costs will escalate quickly, so think carefully about which ones to buy and try the demo versions first.

Retouch4me Heal Verdict

Retouch4me Heal showed itself to be a good performer producing smoother-looking, cleaner flesh tones without an artificial look. It does so quickly and saves the chore of manually resolving skin issues. Working each image is quick and if you’ve a great many pictures to edit, there is the option of creating an action in Photoshop for batch processing.

If people photography is your main interest and you spend a lot of time retouching pictures, the Retouch4me portfolio of editing apps is worth a close look, as the Heal app shows.

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