Phoenix Area Children’s Photographer- “Before & After”

I’ve decided to add a little something extra to my blog this year and have had a couple ideas going around in my head about what to do.  One of my ideas is to showcase a before and after image to show the work that goes on after the camera stops clicking.  This photo was a recent one I had taken, but unfortunately, when I loaded in into my computer, I had noticed that my settings were not correct and the image was left underexposed. While I always try to get the images correct in camera as close as possible, sometimes I make mistakes or forget to change my settings from a previous session.  Here, I had her in one area of the room and when we changed locations within the room, the light had shifted though I did not change my camera settings.  Lucky for me, I always shoot in RAW and knew how to fix my mistake.

Here are a couple of steps I took to make the image really shine.  First, I opened it in ACR and fixed most of my problems there, including exposure, white balance, fill lights and brightness.  From there, I loaded it into Photoshop and cleanup up her skin a little bit.  It looked like there was some paint on her arms and the tone was a little off.  To fix that, I simply used the healing brush and did a simple curves layer to fix the tone. Next,  I used a layers adjustment layer to make her hair and eyes really shine.  Then I added a white radial gradient layer set to soft light to brighten, soften and give the overall feel of the photo a dreamy look.  Finally, I used portraiture for any finishing touches.  And there you have it!   In a few simple steps I took what looked like a poor image and recovered it into what may be one of my favorites.

I’d love to know what you think! I will be showing the before and after of another image in the near future so make sure to come back and check it out!

Emily