I get annoyed when people see a picture of a pretty girl and automatically say: “eh, it’s all Photoshopped” as if Photoshop is the long version of a four-letter word, I say, thanks to Photoshop we can give the client a brilliant result without having to dip ourselves in chemicals under red lights (I do admit that the smell of a developer makes me a bit nostalgic still, but it’s because I don’t have to spend time with it anymore). Here is an image manipulation job I received from a Las Vegas client, where the shot she sent me looked nice but needed “something..”. on the right, is the before image. first, I cropped it just a bit to get Katie to be more dominant in the frame, the rest was mainly some perfecting of stubborn hair and a very careful dodge and burn process that is similar but a bit more precise than what I would be able to do in the darkroom.
Following, are a some more “dramatic” Before and after samples