How do you do professional retouching?

The goal of retouching a photo is to make it look like, there was actually no retouching done!

The photo of you, needs to look like you, by being natural, relatable, and genuine. We are not taking photos and doing beauty retouching for the cover of fashion magazines like Vogue or GQ.

 Here is a photo of me, straight out of camera (SOOC).

Usually, I follow these, but not limited to, re-touching steps:

1. General adjustments
1. Exposure (is the photo too dark or too bright?)
2. Colour (is the person too warm (red), or too cold (bluish)
3. Whiteness, blackness, contrast
4. Calibration (correct for the camera and lens)
5. Remove the lights modifiers 
2. Details
1. Enhance the irises (the eyes are the window to the soul, just sayin')
2. Blemish removal (anything that is not going to be there in 2 weeks)
3. Make up correction - little, or too much, lipstick, eyeliner, etc.
4. Teeth whitening, if needed
5. Hair - removal fly away hairs (hair, nose, eye), missed shaving, etc.
6. Lighten "bags" under the eyes
7. Skin tones - for example, redness in skin, or skin discolouration
8. Skin texture - depending, add a little softness
9. Wrinkles - I may reduce them, but I don't remove them
10. Clothing - remove blotches, marks, dandruff, dead skin etc. Note, black clothing looks great, but my camera picks up a lot of details.....
3. Other
1. Remove glare in glasses
2. Minor adjustments to clothing
3. Specific requests - if there is something a you specifically want such a removal of a nose earing, or reduce the visibility of a birthmark/mole, etc.
4. Crop
1. Provide the images to you in three different sizes:
1. WIDE - pretty much, as captured
2. TIGHT - more captivating, emphasizes face and eyes,
3. SQUARE - for social media profiles (e.g., LinkedIn, Facebook) 

So, here are three different sizes of the "final" image.