The Post-Processing

Since this is a beauty headshot, the focus is really on the face, so we’ll have to do a little more facial retouching than usual. Plus, the fact that she’s holding a flower near her face, and that it’s so prominent in the photo, means we’ll have to make sure the flower looks really good, too. So, this particular photo is going to take a few extra steps to get it where we want it. I shot the image in RAW, so we’ll start our processing in Camera Raw (or you can use Lightroom’s Develop module, which is basically Camera Raw).

STEP ONE:
I didn’t do a super job on the composition of this image (I feel like there’s too much space above her head), so let’s start by cropping the image in Camera Raw. Get the Crop tool (C) from the toolbar up top and click-and-drag out the cropping border, so it surrounds the entire image. Press-and-hold the Shift key (so everything maintains the same proportions), then click-and-drag the top-right corner point inward (as shown here), until the composition looks about right. When it looks like what you see here, press the Return (PC: Enter) key on your keyboard to confirm your cropping, and the preview adjusts so you just see the final cropped image (as seen in the next step).