Tutorial Description
Yesterday we took you through our process in coming up with the perfect lighting for a portrait of Chris, Phlearn’s CFO, and today we’ll be taking you through the steps we took in Photoshop to bring our final image together!
You can view Pt. 1 of this two part tutorial HERE. Retouching male faces can be tricky because it’s while it’s still important to make your subject look good, too much retouching can look unnatural. However, this can be true for any portrait, and it is by no means a rule! In this portrait, we clear away blemishes using a simple and easy manner with the Healing Brush Tool.
Maintain a Healthy Level of Saturation
One of the most important things to remember when making Shadows darker is to keep your Saturation at the right Level. When darkening parts of your image, or “burning”, the Saturation tends to decrease. This will leave behind a greyish Color and looks like dirt on Skin. To fix this, you can use a Hue & Saturation Adjustment Layer. Simply decrease the Lightness while increasing the saturation to make up for the lost Color. You can use a Layer Mask to only affect the parts of your image you want darker.
Finishing Touches
Drawing attention to your subject’s Face is always key in a close up headshot such as this one. By painting white onto the center of Chris’s Face and changing the Layer Blending Style, we get an effect that compliments the darkened Shadows and Draws more attention to where we should be looking at. The exact same technique can even be used to create stronger catchlights in the eyes.
