Lighting and makeup can do a lot, but there are times when it’s just not enough. In this tutorial I show one way of achieving a final photo that pops.

The first thing I did was open up the Levels Dialog and give enter the properties: 12 1.00 243 to give the image a little more depth and contrast boost.

The next step is to clean up all the stray hairs covering her face. For this, I used the Clone Stamp set to lighten with a feathered brush and reduced the opacity to 40%

I did the same for any blemishes I found.

To get rid of the dark circles under her eyes I made a feathered Clone Stamp a little larger, set it to lighten and cloned the area directly under the dark areas.

To diminish the shiny areas on her face I used Select>Color Range>Highlights, copied the highlights to a new layer, and Gaussian Blurred the layer to 18% so it wasn’t too dramatic.

Next I used the Lasso Tool and set a feather at two pixels to select the whites of her eyes. Then I clicked Image>Adjust>Hue/Saturation and lowered the saturation to -19 to reduce redness and upped the brightness to +6 to make them slightly whiter. Be careful not to overdo this. It’s easy to do.

I used the same Lasso Tool set at a feather of two pixels and selected her iris and pupils. I then copied them to a new layer and used Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask set at 73, 3.0,0. I clicked ok and repeated this one more time to add some punch to her eyes.

She had some fray on her tank top under her arm so I used the Clone Stamp set to normal at 100% opacity and used a sweeping motion from her arm down towards the seam.

Then cloned the vertical left edge downward to meet up with it and make it look natural.

To add a little more life to her and Kevin’s hair I selected the highlights I could see with the Lasso Tool set with a 35 pixel feather and set the levels at 0,1.00,219.

To reduce the harsh shadows a little I adjusted the Curves as such.

I then selected her lips with the Lasso tool set at a feather of 4 pixels, and used Filter>Sharpen>Unsharp Mask to these settings: 73, 3, 0 to add some pop and a little extra shine.

That’s it! As I always say, there’s so many ways to do things in Photoshop. This method is one of the many I may use for a given project. You may have a better way. Always do what works best for you and happy editing!

-Tyler