Photography: Photo Editing

Good Morning! Amanda here with another photography editing tip.

I normally do 98% of my editing in LightRoom, but sometimes, I have a specific vision for the image I am working on & need to pull it into Elements to give it the final touch-up. I recently took some portraits of a very sweet little girl & one of the images I really loved the most I just could not get to balance out.

When I warmed it up (increasing the yellow/orange tones) to give some ‘life’ to her skin tones, the greenery in the picture washed out to a bright green instead & left the outside edges of her hair super orange, which I did not like at all. Leaving the image cooler (more on the blue/grey) didn’t give her skin that beautiful glow. So into Elements we go.

In the cool photo, the greenery & her hair look great, but her skin is a little 'dull'. In the warm photo, her skin is beautifully warm & childlike, but look at that neon greenery.

When I edited, I made 2 versions of the same photo, one the too cool, good greens version & one the gorgeous skin, but too neon everywhere else version. I opened both images in Elements.

Pull the too bright version on top the the too cool version, so that both photos are in one canvas, lined up right on top of each other. Add in a layer mask & fill it with black (ctrl+i is the shortcut I use, it’s for creating the inverse). This will make what you see disappear, until you mask back in the photo.

Pick up your white paint brush & start masking back in the face area & hair, this will bring back the warmer tones of her face, but eliminating the neon from the cooler photo.

Of course you could leave it as is or continue editing. Making it a black & white, with the gradient method we used last month, or take that black & white a step further & adding a color layer to make it a ‘toned’ image. You could use any color in the palette for the effect you desire. I’ll go ahead & show you that now, using a darker brown/sepia style color.

Add a “SOLID COLOR” layer above the gradient map, change the blend mode. You can experiment with how you want it to look, some of the modes that work best are screen, soft light, & color. Play with the opacity too. The great part about photography is that it’s all up to you, the artist on what you want your final image to look like.

Here are the final products, in color & a dark sepia tone.