Today’s guest blogger is Sarah Modene of Sarah Modene Photography.  Sarah has amazing tips below to creating the perfect edit and after seeing her images in the Seniorologie Spotlight Contest and Instagram Seasonal Photo Contests and following her work, she definitely has a beautiful editing process.  Her images are beautiful and really capture the essence of each senior she photographs and the editing is the icing on the cake!  Check out these wonderful tips from Sarah and stay tuned to something coming soon from Sarah here on Seniorologie!!  Be sure to follow Sarah on Instagram, @sarahmodene, so you can see all the latest from her!

Tips for Creating the Perfect Edit By Sarah Modene

Let’s be honest: it’s an overwhelming world out there when it comes to editing techniques for photographers. So many photographers claim that their actions will give you the perfect image with the click of a button, and you’ll find several websites advertising skin smoothing actions that will give your subject the perfect complexion, no skills needed. Well, I’m here to tell you–as controversial as it may sound–that you can get the perfect edit all on your own just by utilizing Photoshop’s many tools, no outside actions needed. I’m going to show you a few tips that I use to obtain the look I want for my images. You can use these techniques to fit within your editing style, but I’ll show you how I use them for mine, which I like to think is clean and stylish.

1. Start with a good SOOC image

Let’s go over the basics first: I always shoot my images with the final result in mind so I have as little as possible to correct in Photoshop. Before shooting, the first thing you want to make sure you have right is your white balance. I never shoot with auto white balance, always custom. Look up Kelvin white balance in your camera’s manual and figure out how to set it; it’s really quite easy. Your manual should have a chart telling you which number to keep your white balance set to depending on the time of day. I also use a reflector to bounce light into my subject’s face to fill in shadows and add catchlights to their eyes. All of my Seniors get their hair and makeup done before their shoot, and I cannot even begin to tell you what a world of difference this makes when it comes to editing my subject’s skin and fixing stray hairs. A good MUA will cut down your editing time in half. Trust me!

2. Adobe Camera Raw

You should always be shooting in RAW. This will give you complete control over your image, allowing you to easily correct things in post-processing that you may have gotten wrong in-camera, such as white balance, etc. Before you edit a RAW image, you need to open it in Adobe Camera Raw first. If you notice your subject’s skin tone is too yellow, for example, you can pull down the slider in the white balance window. If an image of mine is too hazy, I can pull down the blacks slider and the highlights slider. I tend to do most of my post-processing corrections involving color-correcting and getting rid of shadows, etc., in ACR.

3. Layers, layers, layers!

My first mistake when starting out in Photoshop was not learning how to use layers correctly. Building effects with layers over your image will keep you from permanently and globally editing the image, and will give you full control over the effects you create, such as vignettes and dodging/burning, etc.

4. Portraiture

The only outside plug-in I use, besides the occasional texture, is Imagenomic’s Portraiture plug-in. I’ve found that Portraiture is simply amazing for editing skin, including skin tones and blemishes. I always run Portraiture on a very low setting before doing any further edits inside Photoshop after I have edited the image in ACR. There are many different ways to use Portraiture, but it’s still a simple and easy-to-use tool that will give you the best results for your subject’s skin.

5. Curves

The things you can achieve with your curves layer tool in Photoshop are endless! I use curves to really bring out my editing style in my images. I first use the curves tool to do any skin tone corrections, especially if I notice there is too much red in the tones. You can also use curves to create contrast, add a layer mask to do a dodge and burn effect to contour your subject’s face, and create a gorgeous vintage look for your image. I use curves more than any other tool in Photoshop!

6. Cleaning up your image

I usually duplicate the background layer first, so I’m not editing directly on the original image, and use the healing and clone tools to clean up anything I notice that is distracting in the image. I typically use the healing tool to get rid of stray hairs on my subject’s face or floating around her head, and the clone tool to remove any distracting objects in the background.

So there you have it: the tools and techniques I use the most when editing my images! As you can see, the only tool not in Photoshop that I use is Portraiture. It typically takes me less than ten minutes to edit each image, even less if I want the image to be particularly clean without many effects. I stay away from using actions, because I find that they often give my images a generic look and I have little control over the end result. I’d rather do everything manually myself, and that way my editing style becomes more original and unique than if I were always using actions to correct things for me. So just play around in Photoshop and you’ll find all these amazing tools you may not be aware of, and I promise you’ll get much better results. 🙂