Photoshop Before & After │ Hartford, CT Senior Photographer

Anyone that knows me well can tell you I love playing in Photoshop. I could literally get lost for hours retouching images just for the fun of it. Maybe it’s because I used to be a painter, so Photoshop is a natural replacement for my paint brushes.

Even though I enjoy retouching images, I don’t want to spend my time retouching because my image isn’t technically correct.  I always want to get it right in camera, so I won’t have to fix an image, just enhance what’s already there.  That being said, I worked on this image a lot longer than what I normally would.

I dragged Sarah outside to snap a shot of her new haircut and I knew she would flip if the photo showed any flaws, (she’d kill me if she knew I was posting the before picture!) so I worked on it until I knew she’d be happy to look at it. She was backlit and the sun was pouring into my lens creating a lot of haze, which I fixed.  There were a lot of red tones in her skin, which I removed, as well as doing some skin smoothing,   I gave the photo a good contrast adjustment, bumped up the color and added a texture and a warm filter.   Then a little selective burning, a vignette and voila!

Another thing that is really important when you are retouching is consistency.   I edit in the same light.  My office is really bright and so to make sure I’m seeing what’s correct, I pull the shades to make sure I’m editing without additional light falling on my screen and calibrate my monitor frequently.

Then I tried it in black and white.  Which one do you prefer?