The Post-Processing

For this image, the post-processing is pretty straightforward, but if you want to go from a 1940s Hollywood-style look to more of a dark, film noir style, I went ahead and included a fun little effect you can pull off when you’re done with the basic retouch. The effect reminds me of the old detective movies, and ideally, I would have her in long black gloves, holding one of those elegant long cigarette holders (like the one in that famous photo of Audrey Hepburn), but then I’d get letters complaining that I’m promoting smoking, so we’ll just roll with this.

STEP ONE:
Here’s the original image opened in Camera Raw, and to me it looks a little dark (although I like the way the background looks, with that round glow from the background light at a low power setting hitting the white seamless to create a medium gray background). The problem is that, if we brighten things up, it’s going to brighten the background, too, but it needs to be done, so we’ll deal with the background later.