I always tell people when I am shooting; “Don’t worry, I can fix it in Photoshop”. Most people don’t really believe it, or they humor me, but they are always happy with the final images. I always wanted to do a before and after to show people what can be done so they might actually believe me. When I saw this image, I thought it would be a good candidate for a before / after. I won’t go into all the details as to how it was done, as that would be quite a long diatribe. But I will say a few things. First, these series of shots were done to promote a book. You can see the book in the before shot. I had taken lots of other pictures of her as well, from various angles, all reading the book.
In this shot, though, I really liked the way she was looking at the camera and wanted to see if I could make it work as a non-promotional portrait shot by getting rid of the book. To do this, I had to recreate the body. So, I grabbed body parts from other pictures to make it all work. There were also lots of other things I did to bring out her eyes and shine her hair, smooth the skin, vignetting, background blur and much more. So here they are. The top shot is right out of the camera with minimal changes, such as contract adjustments or levels. The bottom is after all the work.
Now, I am not always a fan of shots that are so heavily photoshopped. But the industry loves it. As you can see by my work, I tend to enjoy the grittier side. So just for fun, I have also added the image as I would have done it for my own portfolio. You decide what you like, but now you know what can be done.
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