A few months back I handed off a portrait retouch and the client came back asking for the skin to look “a little more natural.” Which, if you’ve been in this business longer than a week, you know is the most subjective note a human being can possibly give you. I’d done my usual dodge-and-burn routine on a separate layer, it looked clean, I thought we were good. We were not good.

That’s when I started digging into RAW-level retouching more seriously. Not just using Camera Raw as a raw converter and moving on, but actually doing meaningful work inside it. Which is how I landed on this tutorial.

In this Kelvin Designs tutorial, Kelvin walks through how to use Photoshop RAW Brushes inside Adobe Camera Raw, including how to install them and how to put them to work in an actual edit. It’s the kind of video that feels short but lands heavy if you’re paying attention.

Why Editing in Camera Raw Changes the Game

Most people treat Adobe Camera Raw like a tollbooth. You pay your dues, tweak the exposure, and drive through to Photoshop. But Camera Raw has a brush tool that lets you paint localized adjustments directly onto your image, and when you load it up with preset RAW brushes, you’re essentially applying complex, parameter-driven corrections with a single stroke.

The big deal here is that everything you do in Camera Raw is non-destructive by nature. You’re not flattening anything, not committing to a look, not sweating when a client emails you three weeks later. The adjustments ride along with the file, and you can dial them back at any time. For retouching work especially, that headroom matters a lot.

Installing RAW Brushes Without Losing Your Mind

Kelvin keeps this part straightforward, which I appreciate because I’ve spent embarrassing amounts of time hunting through Adobe’s folder structure for where things are supposed to live.

To install RAW brushes, you need to drop them into the correct local settings folder on your machine. On a PC, you’re navigating to your user folder, then AppData (which is hidden by default, so make sure you’ve got hidden folders visible), then Roaming, then Adobe, then Camera Raw, then Settings. On a Mac the path is similar but runs through your Library folder. Once you drop the preset files into that Settings folder and relaunch Photoshop, Camera Raw picks them up automatically.

From there, open any image in Camera Raw, grab the Masking tool, choose Brush, and your installed RAW brushes will be available as presets you can load and apply. No building from scratch, no guesswork on the numbers.

The Actual Editing Process, Step by Step

Once you’re inside Camera Raw with your image open, the workflow Kelvin demonstrates goes like this.

Open your image in Camera Raw (you can do this by right-clicking a layer in Photoshop and choosing “Convert to Smart Object,” then double-clicking the smart object thumbnail to open it in Camera Raw). Go to the Masking panel and select Brush. At the top of the brush options, you’ll see a gear or preset icon that lets you load saved brush settings. That’s where your installed RAW brushes show up.

Select the brush preset you want, adjust the size and feathering to suit your subject, and paint over the area you’re targeting. The brush applies all of the preset’s parameters, including exposure, shadows, texture, clarity, sharpness, or whatever that specific brush was built to affect, as a localized adjustment to just the painted area. You can stack multiple brushes by adding new masks, keep them separate and editable, or combine them for cumulative effects.

For skin retouching specifically, Kelvin’s own RAW brush presets (available at his site) are tuned for things like evening out skin tones, pulling back highlights on oily areas, and adding subtle texture. The results read more natural than a lot of Photoshop-side techniques because you’re working within the raw data rather than on top of a rendered pixel layer.

Where I’d Push This Further (and Where It Falls Down)

Here’s my honest caveat. RAW brushes are phenomenal for global texture and tonal adjustments, but they’re not going to replace frequency separation for detailed skin work. If you’ve got blemishes, scars, or significant texture variations you need to deal with surgically, you still want to be doing that on the Photoshop side where your clone stamp and healing brush live.

Where I’ve started using RAW brushes heavily is in the earlier stage, before I even think about frequency separation. I’ll use them to balance the overall light on skin, knock back any color cast in shadows, and get the base tone reading consistently across the face. Then I go into Photoshop for the fine detail work. That order of operations has saved me time on the Photoshop side because I’m not compensating for problems I could have fixed upstream.

One more thing worth noting: this technique works best when you’re actually starting with a RAW file. If you’re working with a JPEG, Camera Raw still opens it, but you’re operating on compressed data and the adjustments can look rougher, especially anything touching texture or clarity. Shoot raw if you can. I know, I know. But really.

The One Thing to Take Away

Non-destructive doesn’t just mean “safe,” it means flexible, and building your retouching foundation in Camera Raw before you ever touch a pixel layer is one of the better habits you can install in your workflow. Watch the full Kelvin Designs tutorial on YouTube for the visual walkthrough, because seeing the brush strokes and parameter changes in real time is worth more than any written breakdown.