We have finally reached the “conclusion” of our series on Portrait Editing! Yay! You might be asking, “Why the parentheses?” Well, I’ll tell you why. This may be the last video in this series on editing this particular photo, but each photo, look, and idea is unique and may take its own set of tweaking here and there using different filters, techniques, and layers that I never even touched on in this series. With that said, we definitely covered the basics and – hopefully – gave you some insights into how I approach editing portraits.
This video is a little different than the others because each photo I tend to finish up just slightly different depending on the choices I made along the way. I might need to go back and do some more dodging and burning, possibly add or tone down sun flare if the image has it, I might be converting to black and white or playing with different desaturation techniques, or I could need to do some serious clean up that I didn’t see when I first began the image. You never know and I always find that it’s a great practice to walk away from the image for a bit before you come back and make these final adjustments. Your eyes can become a little deceiving and you might not be seeing things as clearly as a fresh set. Finally, always have somebody else check out your work and give you some HONEST feedback. Don’t post it up on Facebook and Instagram and expect to get real comments, ask a friend or a mentor to really take a look at your work and tell you if there is something odd or wrong with the image that you could fix easily before sharing it with the rest of the world. Just my final $.02. I hope this series has been helpful, and I can’t wait to share the next one I’m currently working on soon.
Want more? Be sure to follow me on social media like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter; and also be sure to subscribe to my Vimeo and YouTube to channels to be the first to know when new BTS and instructional videos are up!