Here is my second take on Kate’s portrait, this time with some skin edits. First,  I cloned away a few blemishes. Then, I sampled some midtone skin and painted on a blank layer at a very low opacity to smooth the roughness in the skin. I didn’t want to go too far, she’s a kid after all. Also did a bit of low opacity dodging of the eye area per a suggestion by Jen, which I think helped tremendously. Finally, I added a small amount of contrast back in Lightroom.

Any other ideas about how to go about this type of editing? Or, thoughts on learning how to take this type of casual portrait in natural light? Your comments so far have been really helpful so don’t hold back!

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Here is the first of my experiments in editing one of the shots from my practice shoot with Kate. Luckily, she has woken up a bit by now. This was taken around 9:00 on an overcast morning. The first view is a pretty basic edit in Lightroom 1.4 with the exposure boosted a bit to unplug some of the shadows in the eyes and some sharpening applied using the portrait sharpening preset.

Following is my go at Kate’s eyes to make them stand out a bit more. Using Photoshop Elements, I used layer masks on several different layers; one screen layer to whiten the whites of the eyes, a second screen layer to lighten the irises, and a multiply layer to darken the pupil and the rim around the irises. Finally, I used Unsharp Mask on the iris area.

Note: I am mystified by the overall lightening of the second shot compared to the first because I did not edit it beyond the eyes. Something to do with color spaces and flipping the second shot from LR to Photoshop Elements and back to LR, I suspect. Will have to look into that further!

Later, I will do some retouching of the skin and lips and maybe play a bit with style too. In the meantime, all comments and tips will be appreciated. How do the eyes look? Is the pose okay? Other thoughts?

EDIT: I decided to put one more in this post. The second image from above but cropped to show the eyes better. Also, I think it is clickable to view a larger version.

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One of my photography goals is to learn to make nice portraits using available light. To that end, I’ve been practicing on 13-year-old Kate. Today’s post is straight-out-of-camera, but I thought it was a good one to show what I was working with for this shoot (I mean the light, not the delightful model!). In coming days, I’ll show some of the processed shots from the same shoot. I will be very grateful for any suggestions and advice that will help me improve in both the shooting and the processing.