Self-portrait 2024

Last week I talked about what gear and settings I use when shooting clean and simple portraits, as well as lighting considerations and my approach in general.

Today I'm going to talk about the last part of the process - editing my images in Photoshop. This won't be a long post because these days I don't actually do that much to my images.

I used to be guilty of overcooking my images, but my eye and taste as a photographer developed over time and I can now see the fine line between 'just enough' and 'way too fucking much'.

Also, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE black and white portraits - that's pretty much my bag these days when it comes to images of people.

before vs. after face retouching 2024

For this style of portraiture, I will:

1. Do a light retouching of the face and make up, which involves:

It's worth noting here that if I am photographing a man, I don't do any of step 1. Men generally tend to look better with sharper lighting and don't need to have their features emphasised in a feminine/soft/beautiful way but I do remove major blemishes etc for everyone.

When shooting portraits of other people, please be mindful of their feelings and what they actually need from the photographs. Just because an image is technically perfect (clean flawless background, exposed, lit and composed correctly) doesn't mean that it's not complete garbage. The reverse is true for images that are technically 'imperfect' but are ALIVE, full of spirit/humanity or otherwise beautiful.

Learn to read faces properly, find the humanity and warmth in your images and be radically honest with yourself if something is not cutting the mustard.

2. Then I flatten the image and do a straight black and white conversion. I keep PSD copies of the file at each stage so I can go back and correct any mistakes I make without having to start from scratch. I will typically have about 5 or 6 files for each final image, which capture each major stage of the editing process. 

3. Then I add an adjustment layer with Curves on it, and adjust this until I'm happy with the contrast, how bright and clean the lighter parts of the image are, and how dark and solid the darker parts are.

4. Then I run the image through a filter called Portraiture, with an opacity of 60% for this layer, add a layer mask and then black out the eyes and lips and front sections of the hair to make these parts stand out and give some more depth to the image.

And that's it!

Here are a couple more of my favourites from the same shoot:

And no I don't care about the background being a bit crinkly because the photographs are otherwise polished and sometimes its good to have a bit of texture/life in an image. Are the images perfect? No! But they're beautiful and perfectly fine for my needs! 🤓 ❤️

These days I am less concerned with perfection, and more concerned with reality.

- Linda ✌🏻

P.S If you'd like to book in for some 1:1 tuition, feedback/critiques or creative coaching, email me at lindaradosinska@hey.com