My Portrait “Finishing Move” in Lightroom

Hi Gang (and Happy Monday). 🙂

I’ve talked about this one before, but recently I’ve had some questions about how I finish off portraits, so I thought I’d share this technique again. It’s not  some earth-shattering Lightroom secret or anything, but it’s something that I do to most of my portraits as a finishing move once I’m done with any retouching. I simply brighten my subject’s entire face just a bit, and while it’s subtle, really does make a difference. The original image is above.

STEP ONE: Get the Adjustment Brush; double-click on the word “Effects” to reset all the sliders to zero. Now I drag the Exposure slider to the right to about +1.00 or so (doesn’t have to be exact at this point), and I paint over the subject’s entire face and the top part of their neck (as shown here).

STEP TWO: Now I drag the Exposure slider back to the left until the lighting looks realistic (usually that +1.00 is too much), and in this case, it looked about right to me at+ 0.57. This bit of brightening does three things: (1) it helps create a look of “fall off” in your lighting (2) it draws your subject’s eyes to your subject’s face, and (3) brightening the face is usually somewhat to very flattering to your subject.

Above: here’s a before (left) and after (right) to adding that little bit of extra light on the face.

OK, that’s all there is to it (told you it wasn’t an earth-shaking technique, but if you like it, and it makes your portraits look even a little better, it’s worth it, right?).

Hope you find that helpful.

Take care,

-Scott

P.S. Lookout, Texas here I come! I’m there with my Lightroom full-day seminar very soon. In San Antonio on Feb 22nd, and Houston on Feb. 26th. Come on out and spend the day with me. Tickets and info here.