Studio & Location Lighting Secrets for Digital Photographers

Chapter 12. Photoshop Enhancements

Vered works hard to create the very best in-camera images. You've seen them throughout this book. In this chapter, she gave me the okay (after almost killing me with stink eye) to apply some of my favorite Photoshop techniques to her exquisite photographs. Thanks Vered!

Count on Changes

As a studio photographer, change is the name of the game. There are three reasons for this:

One, your clients will have their own opinions on best shot. These opinions will basically depend on the composition and lighting of the photograph and how the model looks. Clients will often suggest changes during the photo session, so don't get rattled if this happens.

Two, clients usually have ideas about what they want in terms of post-processing digital enhancements.

Three, you'll probably have a whole slew of creative ideas on how to tweak your images in Photoshop. We'll address the digital enhancement side of change here.

The Secret: Know the capabilities of Photoshop and how to best use them.

Test yourself: Compare the left and middle images above and count the number of changes.

Then come back here to check yourself. No peeking!

Okay, here are the eight enhancements that were made to this photograph. Did you see all of them?

1. I used the Dodge tool to whiten the model's teeth and ...