Portrait Photography Masterclass - Photoshop Pro Techniques
What you'll learn
- Easy ways to fix common issues including "flat" images, washed out sky, eyes obscured by shadow, low contrast, and lack of definition, details and/or texture
- How to artfully perform basic clean up on your subject's skin
- Useful techniques to pick out details and, in an intelligent way, sharpen selected areas in your photo
- Masterful techniques to get the most out of Photoshop’s powerful adjustment tool, Curves
- How to work with masks and seamlessly blend them
- An efficient and quick workflow based on Adjustment Layers
- A few simple steps to to apply targeted adjustments to make major improvements to your images
- The best way to increase distinction in your portraits and add drama
- “Non-destructive" techniques that will further enhance your images
Requirements
- Ideally Photoshop CC, trial free version is more than enough. If you have very old Photoshop version - Photoshop CS2 you still will be able to work with most of the techniques, apart from the Black&White Tool, since it was introduced in Photoshop CS3
- No prior knowledge of Photoshop is necessary, I will explain all the techniques in a simple way
- We will work with high quality images provided as supplementary materials to help you move on even faster!
Description
The secret of creating striking portraits lies in natural-looking, seamless manipulation. Through hands-on work using five unique portrait edits, you’ll take a dive-deep into portraiture specific adjustments such as skin, body shape, eyes and hair enhancements. You’ll also learn how to work with light to create depth and intrigue in your images. Together we’ll study the way your subject is affected by light and its direction, and explore how advanced photo editing techniques can significantly enhance the the balance and beauty in your work.
Sharpen Your Skills
Non-Destructive Workflow
Learn how to combine masks and adjustment layers to achieve your creative vision while at the same time maintaining tremendous flexibility. You’ll be able to create alternative versions of one photo in no time, or revisit your artwork in the future to bring new ideas to life with just a handful of strategic adjustments.
Essential Portrait Enhancements
Establish a solid base for any portraiture edit by first performing a quick clean-up and body shape correction with the Liquify tool, and then a background fix with the Stamp tool. You’ll immediately add impact to your portraits by bringing up the detail in the frame, including hair texture enhancement and intelligent eyes brightening.
Counter Balance the Visual Weight
Learn how to increase the distinction between your subject and the background. Draw your viewers into the frame and add a strong visual punch to get their attention. By bringing up the textures in the environment, you’ll create more dramatic, effective artwork.
Master the Classic “S”-Shaped Curve
Discover this extremely useful technique to target flat areas in your images. You’ll learn how to quickly and precisely add contrast to the scene. And you’ll also experience how to gain more control of your light and shadow contrast by combining “S”-Curve with Layers and Masks.
Low Key Portrait Technique
Play with balancing shadows and lights to build a moody, nostalgic atmosphere. You’ll work with complementary colors to create subtle grading with Curves, and discover how to inject a desired shade into selected luminosity ranges.
Recompose Your Scenes
Explore recomposing your frames so you can get your desired canvas ratio. And get creative by cropping images shot in portrait orientation to square, or recreate missing background elements to achieve a more compelling and seamless composition.
Who this course is for:
- Take this course if you want to learn in detail powerful and flexible Photoshop techniques to improve your photos
- Take this course if you are curious about techniques behind striking portraits
- Take this course if you are an artist and would like to introduce digital techniques in your creative process
- Take this course if you want to learn how to create digital artwork that sells well on image stocks like Sutterstock, iStock, Alamy and others
- Take this course if you want to develop artistic skills in fields of creative photo processing
- Take this course if you love photography!
Instructor
![Kasia Zmokla](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 64 64"%3E%3C/svg%3E){kind=avatar}
- 4.3 Instructor Rating
- 2,294 Reviews
- 80,026 Students
- 20 Courses
Like you, I’m an artist. I’m passionate about creating personal, meaningful and captivating artwork. I love the freedom of the medium, as it allows - and perhaps encourages - unexpected moments that are both surprising and delightful.
Your vision is unique, and my goal is to assist you on your path to realize your artistic dreams. It’s my mission to support and nourish your talent with the tools necessary to take your photography to the next level. Sharing my experience and helping you develop your visual language helps me evolve as a teacher and enriches me as a human being.
I consider myself extremely lucky to be able to interact with people all over the world who share the same passion as me. It’s honestly my greatest thrill and source of fulfillment to foster the growth and development of the DAC community of photographers.
MY CREDENTIALS
A born-and-raised Polish girl with a passion for artistic self-expression and adventure, I trained at the Eugeniusz Geppert Academy of Art and Design in Wroclaw, Poland and graduated with a Master of Fine Arts in 2003. Photography has been my medium of choice for 20 years, starting in darkrooms and now, in the digital space. I am a featured photography skills teacher on several prominent online educational platforms and am thrilled that over 70,000 students from 183 countries around the world have joined my courses and developed their photography skills with me. It’s a great honor and delight to be engaged in this work — and it’s the best way I know of to make friends on all seven continents! As you can probably tell, I’m an obsessive learner who spends time watching, reading, photographing, editing, creating and selling educational courses.
Thank you for taking the time to visit. I’m happy we’re connected and I’m excited for the journey ahead.