Back to School, let's hit The books edit

camera raw exposure eye dropper tool hsl grayscale premium membership saturation school shadows sharpen

In this edit, we work on one of my favorite back to School images of my daughter from a few years back. But what I didn’t realize was that I cut off the bottom portion of our image, but luckily we have another image we can “borrow” this section from.

Before we do anything else, we will touch up our image in-camera RAW, increasing our shadows and our exposure just a bit. Then, we’re going to sharpen our image before going into our HSL grayscale to increase our oranges under Luminance and decrease them in our Saturation section.      

We’re going to bring up our shadows in our other image so that our bottom looks similar when we insert it. We’re then going to grab the piece we want using the marquee tool and overlay it on top of our main image.   

It takes time and some tinkering to match the two images as best as possible. I recommend looking at the full video tutorial included in my membership. In the full tutorial, I go over my entire process and the tips and tricks I use to get my final image.

We’re going to straighten up our image before extending the canvas and using the fill tool to fill in the new white space with our green background.

I will then use the eyedropper tool to select a lighter section on her face before creating a new layer and inverting it. Finally, I will lower the opacity before brushing under her eyes to lighten them up a bit, ensuring I take care of any dark areas on her face.       

So I confess that her shirt was just a tad too big for her ( I knew she’d grow into it). Luckily, we have the liquify tool to help us make this shirt just a little more flattering. It’s a helpful technique for any odd tiny creases and wrinkles your shirt may have. Sign up for my premium membership and check out my full tutorial to see how quick and easy it can be!

We will brighten her face and highlight her cheeks, nose, and a few other key areas. After we have her face looking lovely and radiant, we will move on to our last few details. Using a few different gradients, we will change up our background and our facial lighting.

That’s it! I hope you enjoyed this blog post, and I hope you check out the full video by joining my entire membership.  

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