When I first started on my photography journey about 4 years ago I would spend hours scouring the internet trying to read up on any type of portrait photoshop editing tutorial that I could find. There were many a night that I would sit on the computer and read tutorials and practice there instructions on my own photos, only to realize that their photography style was different than mine. So keep in mind that when you read this tutorial it is meant to be a jumping off point for you to build your own photography style. These are just some basic portrait photoshop editing photography and editing practices that I use in my everyday editing workflow. Let me know if you have any questions, I’m happy to answer them!
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Ok let’s get started. This photo is of my sweet husband. He is always there for me to practice on whenever needed. Although I do not show very many of his “practice” photos I thought this one might be a good example to use when talking about natural light portraits.
So lets start with a little about the camera settings and how this photo was taken. This was taken in my home studio at around 4:00pm. The window that I was using was direclty to my husband’s left and he was standing at a 45 degree angle to the window. The 45 degree angle is important here because it gives good catchlights in the eyes as well as a good contrast of shadow on his face. I am in love with a good black and white portrait and that lighting contrast is so important to achieve that. I used my 50mm lens as not to have too much lens distortion on his face since I was so close. (Now true, some will say that a 50mm at a closer distance to your subject will cause lens distortion on his face, but honestly I liked the way this photo looked and din’t feel the need to back up to account for some of that distortion.) I also used a very large aperture to achieve the background look I was going for here. Not to mention that it also helped the fact that the natural light was dimming in my studio around 4:00pm.
Ok so there is the straight out of camera (SOOC) shot…let’s move onto photoshop.
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The first thing I do is upload the photo in a DNG format to my computer under it’s correct file name and open up ACR (Adobe Camera Raw 6.7). In ACR I did the following to this photo:
Once the photo is uploaded I use the magnify tool on the eyes to make sure the photo is sharp. If the eyes are not sharp it goes in the trash…but this ones was good to go.
Since I did not take a custom white balance (like I usually do, I guess I was just being lazy) I bumped my white balance temperature up to 4750 and take my tint down to -6. I have found that since I shoot Canon my photos tend to be a little on the “cool (blue)” temperature side so I always do a custom white balance and/or bump the temperature up in ACR.
I also did the following in ACR:
Bump up the exposure to +0.75
Up the recovery to 4 (to recover some of the clipped black) I still have a little black clipped but since it is so little I’m not worried about it.
Up contrast to +28
Up clarity to +7
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Then we move onto photoshop. the easiest thing to do is just make a list of the steps that I take for basically each photo that I edit (this one included)
Run an unsharp mask at 150, 1.5, 0 (focusing on the eyes to make sure I like the amount of sharpness I am applying).
Do a levels layer and bump the midpoint up just a smidge (about +.04).
Use the healing brush to clear up blemishes on skin, dark under eye circles and any thing else that needs to be removed from the clothing or background.
Use the dodge tool at 50% on the catchlights in the eyes.
*Just a note – be sure to watch your photo’s histogram in photoshop while editing as not to clip any highlights or blacks while you are editing.
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Next make a copy of the background layer and run portraiture at around 80% opacity. Mask back in hat, clothing, eyes, eyebrows and hair.
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Next you will need to flatten your image and assess your editing. Sometimes I do another levels layer and up the midpoint just a little bit more for just a bit more brightness.
Crop your image using the “rule of thirds” and save as filenamecolor.
After the editing on the color version of the photo is complete the conversion to black and white it relatively simple. I have a purchased black and white action that I love that I run on my photos. then I do a few simple tweaks to the action to achieve the black and white conversion that I was looking for.
So there you have it…my portrait editing. It is fairly simple and straight forward. I don’t consider it really editing as much a just polishing. Starting with a good SOOC shot is the key here. I hope you enjoyed a glimpse into my portrait photoshop editing workflow! Be sure to stay tuned to my website for more tutorials in the future! Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below.
