Аbout me
Oleg Balanyuk
Hi, I’m Oleg, a retoucher. My philosophy is simple: retouching isn’t a mask — it’s a way to reveal what’s already in the frame. Depending on the task, I choose an approach so that the result meets the client’s expectations while staying true to the original photo.
Portraits, children’s and school photography. Naturalness is key here: I remove distracting details and even out skin tone, but I keep freckles, texture, and individual features. I use frequency separation and Dodge & Burn to work precisely and delicately.
Family and reportage photography. In reportage, dynamics and emotions are the main focus: laughter, hugs, spontaneous glances. I keep the retouching as subtle as possible: I only remove what interferes with seeing the story, and I always preserve the life in the frame.
Beauty retouching. If the goal is to enhance the look for a portfolio, advertising, or social media, I work with details: I refine hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, carefully adjust makeup, and accentuate facial features. At the same time, I maintain photorealism: the result should look like a high‑quality professional shoot, not like an illustration.
Fashion retouching. For catalogs, lookbooks, and glossy projects, I focus on the cleanliness of the image: I balance the color of clothing, remove small lint and unnecessary details, refine fabric textures, and enhance the stylistic expressiveness. It’s important that the image is immediately readable, and the viewer’s attention goes where the photographer or art director intended.
Lifestyle. For content for bloggers, brands, and personal projects, I work on the atmosphere: I adjust light and shadows to strengthen the mood of the shot and choose a color scheme that matches the brand’s style or the client’s personal visual identity.
Batch color correction. For large series (school albums, family shoots, catalogs), I bring the images to a unified style: I align white balance, saturation, and contrast. This ensures a consistent, professional result across the entire series and saves time.
Restoration and recovery of old photos. I work with scuffs, tears, stains, and fading: I restore details, remove noise, and, if necessary, carefully reconstruct lost fragments. The goal is to give the photo a dignified appearance while preserving its historical character.
I also do compositing, collaging, and photo book layout — if you need to assemble a cohesive visual story from individual shots.
I don’t take on product photography: my focus is on people, emotions, and stories. If you have a project in any of these areas — from a series of school portraits to a fashion catalog or restoring a family archive — I’d be happy to help bring the images to their final form so they can be cherished for many years to come.
What is a priority?
My specialization is portraits, school and children’s photography. Here, it’s especially important to preserve sincerity: so that the smile is genuine, the look is alive, and not «polished to the point of being plastic.» What I do and how it helps specifically in portraits and children’s shoots: Basic retouching. I remove minor imperfections, even out skin tone, but preserve the texture: children and teenagers don’t need «glossy» faces — they need naturalness. Batch color correction. If you’re having a photo shoot with 100–300 shots, you don’t need to process each one manually from scratch. I create a unified colour style for the series so that all the photos look like a cohesive story, and I speed up the process without compromising quality. Colour correction tailored to the task. For school albums — calm, «clean» tones; for children’s shoots — warm and soft palettes; for portraits — more cinematic and expressive solutions. Compositing and collaging. I put together spreads, covers, and collections: when you need to create one strong composition from several shots. I do layout for photo books. I create the layout.
