A Little Before & After

I have seen a few sites as of late that show before and afters of beauty style work done by professional photographers and retouchers.  Since beauty is a genre that very much interests me I am always on the look out for techniques to achieve the looks many of these photographers create.  More than ever I am convinced that the retouching plays a HUGE role in the final image despite all that you read about how lighting techniques are  responsible for the look of these images. Yes, you need to start with decent light but it need not be complicated at all.  This image was shot with a single large silver umbrella placed high and right beside me.  I was hugging the light stand.

Anyway, here is a before and after showing what the light contributed to the image and what Photoshop contributed.  Believe me, this is how many of those great beauty shots you see look like before (left image!)--sometimes worse.  I am still learning to retouch my images and it is not an easy thing to do well.  (Depending on how your display is set up this image will probably appear too bright and Blogger seems to make the image too warm as well.  Who knows?!)  If you aren't retouching your work and trying to achieve that 'beauty' look though lighting alone you are going to be a very frustrated photographer.