If you have photographs like these, there are multiple ways of fixing them and these two methods could be used for a variety of other things. So, follow along to find out how I deal with such issues. First, I will show you how to do it in Lightroom, then I will also do the same in Photoshop.

1) Selective Color Correction in Lightroom

Thanks to Lightroom 4′s selective white balance correction, fixing colors in a certain area is a very easy and straightforward process. Start out by using the Adjustment Brush and painting the affected area. In this case, I carefully brushed the model’s face without touching her eyes and mouth. A quick tip: if you accidentally over-brush, do not forget that you can simply press and hold the “Alt” key, and the “+” sign in the adjustment brush will turn to a “-” sign, which indicates that you can erase the over-brushed area. Keep holding the “Alt” key and carefully un-brush the area that you do not want to touch. Here is my selection:

Once the area that needs color/skin correction is selected, simply start moving the “Temp” and “Tint” sliders until the color/white balance is adjusted to match the rest of the skin. In this case, values between 20 and 25 for Temp gave me the best results. If you have a dual display setup, the changes will be immediately visible on the second screen. However, if you work with a single screen, then the best thing to do is to press the “O” button on your keyboard, which will hide the color overlay on your adjustment brush. Then once you move the sliders, you will see the effect immediately.

Here is the before and after:

If you are using an older version of Lightroom with no selective white balance correction, then you can use another method, which also works quite well. Once you click the Adjustment Brush and the menu pops up on the right panel, click the X area right next to “Color”:

Once you do that, a new window will pop-up with a bunch of colors:

Now you have to select a color that you want to apply to the skin. The lower you go, the less the intensity/opacity of the color. Obviously, you have to be more careful with this tool, since you could introduce new colors to your photograph. However, if you do it right, you could achieve a similar result as the above method.

2) Selective Color Correction in Photoshop

If you prefer to take this process to Photoshop, then here are the detailed steps to achieve the same or better result. First, start out by duplicating the existing background layer:

Now change the blending mode of the new layer to “Color” as shown below. This will allow you to paint over the affected area with a color of your choice and will make it easier to blend:

Now select the brush tool from the left menu:

Then Alt+Left Click the area you wish to copy from in order to pick up a sample pixel. In our case I chose the brighter side of the neck area, avoiding areas close to her face and avoiding shadows.

By choosing the right brush size carefully paint over the area you are working on, avoiding painting any other areas (eyes, teeth, eyebrows, earrings, etc.)

Once done, reduce the opacity to a number comfortable to your eyes, making sure you are close to the color of the overall skin color. I felt comfortable at leaving the opacity at 15% for this particular photograph. Finally, flatten the image and examine it for any potential problems with the newly colored area.

So here is the image before:

And here it is after the above changes:

Hope this helps you a bit at solving similar problems you might encounter.

So, what is dodge and burn and where did these terms come from? Here is what Wikipedia says about it:

Dodging and burning are terms used in photography for a technique used during the printing process to manipulate the exposure of a selected area(s) on a photographic print, deviating from the rest of the image’s exposure. In a darkroom print from a film negative, dodging decreases the exposure for areas of the print that the photographer wishes to be lighter, while burning increases the exposure to areas of the print that should be darker.

The same technique can be used in digital photography to achieve similar results, although in Lightroom you can take the process even further by opening up shadows delicately and manipulating the exposure of certain parts of a photograph without ruining any details or colors. It goes without saying that working with RAW images gives a lot more opportunities to recover lots of details, as explained by Nasim in his RAW vs JPEG article.

Here is the before and after comparison of what I have done to demonstrate the Dodge and Burn capability of Lightroom:

The before image is straight out of the camera with no adjustments:

First, I started off with identifying what needs to be done with this photograph and made sketches directly on the image. This method may not be practical while doing batch editing in Lightroom, but could be a good practice when doing selective editing for publishing. Some editing can be done to your personal taste and liking, while some photographs need more careful technical editing. Either way, knowing what you want from a photograph is very important and generally you will develop this skill overtime. Experienced photographers and post-processing gurus typically know right away what needs to be fixed in a photograph, while inexperienced ones generally overlook even important problems. Here is the image with my sketches identifying areas that need to be addressed to my liking:

And here is what each step stands for:

1. Areas where darkening/burning is needed.
2. Areas where lightening/dodging is needed.
3. Areas where dodging/opening up shadows is needed to be performed separately using a new brush. The reason why I took this extra step is due to the way brushes work in Lightroom. In Photoshop you can set different strength for each stroke of a brush, while Lightroom cannot do that. Once you brush an area in Lightroom, you can only set a single value for the strength/opacity of a brush. If you need to set different opacity, you must add a new brush.
4. Finalize/condition the overall look of the photograph.

To selectively dodge and burn the image, I used the Adjustment Brush:

Adjustment Brush has an “Effect” drop down. When selected, it will show the below menu, from which you can locate the Dodge (Lighten) and Burn (Darken) functions for your use:

First, I am going to use the Burn function and highlight where burning is needed. Brush tool marks the stroked area in red (masking), and in Develop Mode preview you can see the results of this action. I set “Exposure” to -0.49 and “Brush Feather” to 80. The size of the brush can be changed depending on the size of the area that you need to select.

Once the above step is done to my liking, I hit Enter on my keyboard and click Adjustment Brush to Dodge the face of my model. Here, “Exposure” is set to 0.78:

The next step is to work on the eyes, legs and deep shadow on the chair by using the same Dodging method as above. The only difference is, this time I set “Exposure” to 0.54:

As soon as I am done with Dodging and Burning the photograph I set the following values:

• Contrast: +10
• Blacks: -5
• Clarity: +5
• Vibrance: +10
• Saturation: +5
• Tone Curve: Medium Contrast
• Green: Hue +24, Saturation -17
• Image Sharpening: 30%

Obviously, these values are what I picked to my liking for this particular image. Play around in Lightroom and choose what works best for your photograph.

And here is Before and After in full size:

Simple changes make huge differences, and that’s without leaving Lightroom!

See the next tutorial on how to fix the above model’s face color.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

Depth

Mastering the depth of the story and being able to translate it into a visual prospect is very important, so it certainly helps to have a solid understanding of how depth of field can affect your images and the story you are working on. Whether it is a portrait or a landscape shot, the right amount of bokeh should be able to transport the viewer into your story. You can choose a longer lens with a large aperture (small depth of field) to pinpoint one element in an image that your viewers could concentrate on, or use a small aperture (large depth of field) to portray the melting pot of action, with many elements to the story.

Background

Background of a photograph is a very big information carrier. Choosing an appropriate background will make your post-processing job a whole lot easier. Who wants to sit and spend precious hours editing out unnecessary distractions on the background? Instead, look for a cohesive environment to work with your story. Background can work hand in hand with your lens aperture to save or ruin your image as an information carrier and storyteller. So, being able to utilize your depth of field efficiently with the background is an art in itself. Ask these simple questions: Is the background relevant to the story that I want to portray? Are the any extra elements in the background that I want to change or eliminate? Should I recompose my shot so that nothing looks out of place?

Here are some simple things you can do with the background that will immediately help you get better results when photographing portraits:

1. Find a different background that is less busy, more or less colorful (see below on color), etc
2. Learn to crop in camera to avoid irrelevant content. Move yourself or your subject to a slightly different location or use a different angle.
3. To get the best bokeh, make sure to give plenty of space between your subject and the background. Having a good fast lens like the Nikon 50mm f/1.8G (see our Nikon 50mm f/1.8G Review) or a solid portrait lens like the new Nikon 85mm f/1.8G will certainly help with getting good bokeh.
4. Don’t be afraid to bring your subject close, but watch out for distortion. Wide-angle and short focal length lenses are known to greatly distort images. Unless your intent is to make your subject’s face look out of proportion, use longer lenses for better compression. That’s why telephoto lenses are ideal for portraiture.
5. Pay attention to lines and curves in the background that could enhance the composition and overall feel of the image.
6. If there are any vertical lines in the background, place your subjects in such a way, that the lines are not directly behind the head of your subject. A great image could be ruined by things growing out of a person’s head.

Color

Color and tone are among the main conveyors of mood and character in any photograph – it can be both distracting and amazing. Although tonality could be more of a post-processing topic, color is most definitely not. You should be able to see the color before you take a photograph, regardless if you wish to alter it later or not. Just like the background, color can make your shot look cohesive or all over the place. Positioning your subjects against a background with lots of different blues, reds and greens may not be a good idea. When you want the eyes to rest on one spot, over your subject, choose a background with a less distracting color palette.

Then again, there are always exceptions to these guidelines, so do not be afraid to experiment.

Our utmost special thanks go to Eric Abbott and his beautiful wife D’Ann Carle Abbott, who own multiple My Favorite Muffin Bakery Cafes in Denver Area. Eric brought us a big variety of mini muffins and we devoured them with pleasure. Honestly, I haven’t had muffins this good EVER! Huge thanks!

Kudos to my favorite makeup artist and a very good friend Sameera for the fabulous work she does. Thank you for everything you do for me!

Special thanks to Hilton Garden Inn Cherry Creek for hosting our workshops!

Here is a portrait of our beautiful model, Leeza from the day. I hope we will be able to cover a lot more in our next workshop, in which we will go through Flash Photography in depth.

For any portrait work, it is best to shoot RAW. First, because the skin tone is very important and any white balance issues can be quickly taken care of in post-processing and second, because you can recover a lot of details from a RAW file. For me it all starts in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. If I cannot get something done in Lightroom, I  import images to Photoshop for further processing. Both Lightroom and Photoshop are very powerful applications – you can get a lot done without using any plugins or other third party software. Do not be afraid to experiment with either Lightroom or Photoshop, as it will only help you broaden your knowledge and build up your post-processing skills.

The close ups usually require a lot of work, due to the abundance of details and features. But the amount of time you put in all depends on the type of look you are trying to achieve. Here is the original image SOOC (straight out of the camera):

Camera Equipment: Nikon D700, Nikon 50mm f/1.4G
Studio Lighting Equipment: Elinchrom Ranger RX with 53″ Elinchrom Octa and 39″ Elinchrom Softbox.
Camera Settings: Manual Mode, 1/160, f/7.1, ISO 200, RAW, Auto WB

Very simple steps in Lightroom going down from the right menu bar in the Development Module:

1. Set White Balance to: Daylight
2. Increased Exposure: +0.50
3. Increased Blacks: +14
4. Decreased Saturation: -5
5. In Color sub-module Boosted Blues: +34
6. Boosted Reds: +10, as shown below:
   
7. To make the frame a little more pleasing to the eye, I slightly tilted and cropped the image as shown below:
   
8. Next, I imported the image into Photoshop to take care of the blemishes. For this purpose I usually use the spot healing brush and/or the patch tool.
9. Next, I took care of the darker spots under the eyes with the clone tool. I selected “Lighten” from the menu box and carefully fixed the dark spots.
10. The next task was to brighten up the eyes a little.
11. Sometimes you will need to even up the skin tone to give the portrait more of a glamorous look. Evening out the skin tone also smoothens pores and blemishes to some extent. There are many ways to do this and a few presets you can use. Or, you can do it manually by utilizing the masking tool along with Highpass and Gaussian blur filters, as explained in my how to smoothen skin and get rid of blemishes article. Also, Nik Software has a plugin called “Dfine”, which not only does a great job at reducing noise, but also for evening out the skin tones.
12. For this particular image I also used the Liquify Filter to give my model’s neck a little more curve.
13. After that I boosted the contrast a little via Image->Adjustments->Brightness/Contrast.
14. Lightly sharpened the image with Smart Sharpen under Filter->Sharpen->Smart Sharpen.
15. Saved and closed the image to go back to Lightroom.
16. Exported the image with default settings and set “Sharpen for: Screen” and “Amount: Standard” in Lightroom Export window.

And here is the final result:

Click the “Next” button on the image to see the before look. You can toggle between the first and last images by pressing the Left and Right arrow buttons on your keyboard as well, once the large version of the image is opened.

Please let me know if you have any questions!

P.S. Here is a crop of the above image to better examine the effects of the post-processing. As you can see, skin texture and pores are preserved. You can always back it off and apply the process lightly to your liking.

This is probably the most known and most used method out there to help you achieve the radiant skin tone. Once you know all the steps, it gets pretty easy to utilize this method. I will use the following image as an example:

If there are many blemishes to get rid of, use the spot healing brush to clean them out and you can use below smoothening method to even out the skin tone.

Note: This method will not get rid of major skin blemishes. It is intended to even out the skin tone and give the skin a smooth look while preserving the natural pores of the skin. In order for this method to work effectively, you will need to use the healing brush to remove bigger and visible blemishes. You can also use the clone tool and the patch tool to effectively remove the blemishes.

Once you open the image in Photoshop your first step should be taking care of the blemishes.

After you are done with the above step, create a background copy by right clicking on the Background and choosing Duplicate Layer.

Change blend mode to Overlay and Invert the layer by pressing Ctrl+I.

Go to Filter->Other->High Pass.

When the High Pass window opens up, start increasing the radius until most skin blemishes are gone. Soft edges are not a problem at this stage as we will reverse the effect in a little bit. For this particular image, I settled it to 11.1 pixels and hit the OK button.

Now go to Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur. This step will reveal how much of skin texture you are willing to preserve. Set a high radius this time, which will reverse the High Pass step. But by gradually going down on radius, visually you will be able to tell if you are comfortable with the combo of High Pass and Gaussian Blur; Smoothening and still preserving some skin texture.

For this particular image I ended up with 2.5 pixels. Visually I thought this was good enough for me to have a smooth, evenly toned skin with some skin texture I want to preserve without turning my model into a plastic doll. Next, hit the OK button.

The next step is to work with masks in order to blend all the previous steps. Make sure you are still on the Duplicate Layer, press Alt+Click on layer mask icon which will yield a black mask. You can see it on the Background Copy:

Choose a Soft Brush, set your foreground color to white and start painting over the blemishes and the skin. Remember that we want the skin to be soft and other parts of the body to be perfectly intact. While painting, be careful not to paint over the edges of the face, nostrils, lips, hair, eyes, eye brows and such.

Once you are satisfied with the result click Ctrl+E to merge the layers and Save the image. Here is our final result for this image:

I hope you will find this tutorial helpful. Once you get used to the entire process, it is going to be a breeze. Let me know if you have any questions!

Posting vertical images to a blog can get frustrating. While dealing with horizontal images is easy, vertical images either take up too much space (if you extract them with the same dimensions as horizontal images) or take less space and require proper alignment. To deal with this problem, I came up with a very simple way to stack images, which keeps our blog clean and allows me to create a storyline with two vertical images side by side.

I first start with extracting two images out of Lightroom with certain dimensions. The dimensions will obviously depend on how big you want your images to be when your clients and visitors view your images. For our site, we typically export horizontal images at 1024 pixels wide and the “medium” size image (the one you normally see when the page opens and the one you click on to bring up a larger image) is around 650 pixels wide. The medium version of the image is automatically created by WordPress, so I only export images from Lightroom and Photoshop at around 1024 pixel width resolution. Therefore, the stacked vertical images also should be no bigger than 1024 pixels wide. That means that I have to extract vertical images at approximately half their width. So what I do, is I just round up the numbers and extract two images with a width of 500 pixels. If you use Lightroom, set the dimensions to 500×1000 (500 horizontal, 1000 vertical) – Lightroom will automatically set the correct vertical size, but limit the horizontal width to only 500 pixels, which is what we want. I leave a couple of pixels in between images to separate them out, so the final image is going to be around 1002 pixels wide. If you want to provide bigger images, say 1200 pixel wide, then extract two vertical images and limit the width to 600 pixels in Lightroom.

Once I have the vertical images I want to place side by side, I open them both in Photoshop:

So, what I have here is two files – Love Poem (5) and Love Poem (6). The next step is to expand the canvas. Start working on the image you want to see on the left side. On the top menu bar, go to Image, then click Canvas Size as shown below:

What you will see next is the box below. There are three values that you need to fill out in this pop up box. Let’s go over it:

1. The top portion will show the current size of the image and the bottom portion gives us the ability to specify the new desired size. How do we calculate the correct size for the Canvas? If the current width of this vertical image is 500 pixels and my second image is also 500 pixels wide, then 1000 pixels should suffice right? Yes, but you do not want the two images to blend into each other, so a couple of pixels should be left in between. I go for two more pixels, so I specify 1002 as the new width. Since the height remains the same, I do not touch it.
2. The next step is to make sure that you pick the right Anchor. Once the image has bigger dimensions, you want to make sure that the image we have there stays on the left, not the middle of the image. Therefore, we click the left arrow, which will force the image to be on the left, with plenty of blank space on the right for the second image.
3. Most of the time I have the Canvas Extension set to white color, due to white colors that we have in our blog (plus white is an elegant color). If you have a background with a different color, you might want to try using your color instead.
4. Verify all the values, then click OK.

Here is what you should get after doing the above:

The next step is to place the second vertical image on the canvas you’ve expanded.

Select the Move Tool from the left side menu or press “V” on your keyboard:

Now click on the title of the second image and drag it down a little, so that it is separated from the area where all images are stacked in Photoshop. We do this in order to be able to drag and drop the second image into the first one:

As you can see, the image window is moved out. Now using the same Move Tool, just drag and drop the second image into the first one with the larger canvas:

Now you should see both images on the same window. You can close out of your second window now. The second image is probably not properly aligned, so just use your mouse to move it to the right side. The space in between (2 extra pixels) should be visible when you move it all the way to the right.

The image is ready for export, so just use the “Save for Web” tool in the file menu and save the image as JPEG.

If you want more space between the vertical images, you can play with the image dimensions while expanding the canvas and use something like 4 pixels instead of 2.

Hope this tutorial will help you in keeping your blog clean and nice-looking!

Although your sons never have a perfect hair day, they are precious in every way :D

Love forever,

Lola, Omar and Ozzy.

First of all, let me introduce Suuthe. It is an all organic skin repair cream company which started with Mari searching for ideas to cure her son’s eczema problem. Without being able to find a solution from doctors for her son Peter’s aching problem, she decided to look further and work on something natural and effective. That’s how Suuthe came to live. As a mother of two children who suffered from eczema for a while, I wish I have met Mari earlier! If you know anyone like that, tell them to check out this wonderful product.

Here is how the photo session unfolded. All of the images were taken with the Nikon D700 body and a single Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G lens (my favorite as always).

This is Mari with her son Peter. I positioned them facing towards a large window to take advantage of the beautiful light pouring into the room. I usually shoot between f/1.8 and f/2.8 with the 50mm, so that the background looks nice and creamy.

I didn’t use any flash for these portraits this time, since I had plenty of light available in the room. In the above image the window is to Mari’s left. Hence, you can see a nice catch light in her’s and Peter’s eyes.

The above portraits were shot while taking advantage of Colorado’s winter sunset. I really like the yellow hue on Mari’s face. Both images were shot at f/1.8.

Initially, I was there to take some headshots, but we decided to add some products to make it a little more fun. I didn’t have anything fancy at my disposal, except for a 40 inch umbrella and one Nikon SB-900 speedlight. So, I tried to use the ambient light as much as could. The below image was shot on a black table at f/2.8, ISO 1000.

Love that depth of field! Shot wide open at f/1.4, ISO 400.

I wanted to do something a little different with some of the images and asked Mari if she had a small mirror for me to play around with reflections. For the above shot on the right, I used the 40″ umbrella along with the SB-900 to concentrate the light on the subject and overpower the ambient light a little. The off-camera flash was triggered by a PocketWizard Plus II unit on the D700 (more on them on our upcoming flash photography articles), with the second unit connected to SB-900 via a PC sync cord. Exposure and flash power were both set manually.

Word of advice to beginners – practice on smallest of the ideas and do not be afraid to experiment. You will learn a lot in the process!

I used my trusty Nikon D700, Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 for wide-angle shots, Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G for detail shots, two SB-900 Speedlights, three Pocket Wizard transmitters/receivers and just one 30-inch umbrella. Everything was shot in Manual mode to give me consistency and control over flashes and the entire process.

It was an on-location photo shoot and I was informed beforehand that the apartment would have glass and concrete walls all around. The only light available was the 3 chandeliers that you see in the first left image. I also had very little ambient light coming from the far kitchen, to the right of the chairs.

Since there were no moving subjects in the first left image, I could have probably gotten away with having my camera on a tripod and setting a slow shutter speed to shoot in ambient light. Instead, I decided to set up my flashes and take a couple of tests shots of the set before my subjects occupied the photo shoot arena. I really wanted to get some reflections and some direct harsh light from my strobes on the chairs and other objects. So, to give it a more “modern” look, I set up my main light using an SB-900 on a stand with a single umbrella in a shoot-through configuration on the opposite side, about 3 meters away from furthest chair.

With having just one side of the set illuminated, I still needed to introduce one more flash to the right. Since I had some ambient light coming from the right, I didn’t want the flash to come off too strong. I set up another SB-900 on a stand with the diffuser cap to serve me as a fill light (or a rim light, considering I would have a subject sitting on that chair). I increased ISO to 400 to let some of the ambient light to come in to the picture. Both flashes were connected to PocketWizard units, with another one on top of my camera.

For the product shoot of the top right image, I used the same umbrella + SB-900 speedlight set to my right at about 45 degrees, a little higher than the product. Increased the depth of field to f/2.5 to have the business cards in focus and everything else in nice bokeh.

The toughest thing to do during this photo session, was control the light spill that was giving me all kinds of nasty reflections on the glass. I did not have any cardboards or other accessories with me, so I had to arrange the light in a way that minimized the spill. The rest had to be cleaned up in Photoshop…

In the above image, I introduced subjects into the set. If you notice, I removed the strobe from behind Kent (the gentleman who is wearing a white shirt). In order to minimize flash on his white shirt (his entire shirt was getting severely overexposed), I had to move the umbrella to my left, above Hani. You can see some rim light on Hani’s hair. I did not move the light on the right as I still needed it to serve me as fill light on Olga’s body (customer on the right) and on Hani’s face.

The product shots were all done with one main light (umbrella). For the above image, I placed the light slightly to my left, above the objects. You can see how the light drops on the product by properly illuminating it and providing me enough light to be able to capture the reflection, too. For the second image below, I removed the rim light from the right and moved the umbrella from my left to my right. Now, Hani’s back and her hair are not lit. I wanted to focus more on the pedicure process.

For the above image of Hani, I set up two lights. One behind Hani to give her a nice rim light and pop her from the background, and another one slightly to my left. Nasim thinks that there is too much rim light, but I kind of like it :) Again, reflections were impossible to avoid but I had to make best of what I had.

Both images above were shot with a rim light behind Hani and the main light to my left. If you are looking for information on my exposure (shutter speed, aperture, ISO, etc), it is available through EXIF on each image.

I hope these examples can give you some idea of how you can use your Nikon strobes creatively and have some good results.