Quick and Easy Beauty Light

Simple Beauty Light

A while back People Magazine published a bunch of photos completely unretouched. But you know what? The celebrities they shot still looked like, well, celebrities. One of the ways the photographers who shot the images were able to accomplish the “retouched” look in camera was by using light to fill in the shadows (that live in the wrinkles) of older subjects.

One simple way to create this effect is with what is traditionally referred to as “beauty light.” It’s quick and easy and can be done with one light and a reflector, or two lights.

The example images for this post are in black and white, because the color doesn’t matter – just look at the shadows.

This first photo was shot with one overhead softbox, as you can see below.

Anna looks OK, but notice all the shadows: under her lips, under her nose, under her neck. Now imagine this same light with a model 20 years older than Anna, say, your grandmother. Not so hot a photo, right?

Now, take a look at this second photo of Anna, and the accompanying lighting setup. I use a Lasolite Trilite, but you could use anything – a tablecloth, a sidewalk, foamcore, heck, even snow works great in the winter.

Now look at the shadows and her eyes – the light is not so harsh and much, much more flattering and smooth.

And here is the view from the model's perspective in case you were wondering:

Questions? Did I lose you after the first paragraph? E-mail me or leave a comment here and I’ll do my best to answer all of the questions. If you want more Doug (and I mean, who doesn’t), you can find me at my site, my blog, and Twitter.

LAB Tutorial by Doug Levy

Good morning friends! Due to an overwhelming response to the last post from Doug, we've asked him if he would be kind enough to write more tutorials on photography.

A Tutorial for the Patience Impaired

I have the, “patience of a flea” as an ex-girlfriend once said. If it’s possible, my attention span is even shorter. With that in mind these LensPro post-processing tutorials are geared toward those of you with a likewise aversion to sitting still. I’m going to leave out as much of the “why” as I can and skip ahead to the good parts, the “how to” and the results. If you want to learn more, I’ve linked to other sites that can do a far better job of explaining complicated Photoshop “why’s” than I can.

In fact, let’s show you right off the bat the before and after images that I’m going to work with today so you can decide if you want to read on without having to scroll to the bottom to sneak a look at the “after” image (which is totally what I do).

Total editing time: 40 seconds (and less after you write an action to make the process repeatable).

Now the how to part.

After opening this photo and doing a basic raw conversion (all I did was change the camera profile and adjust the white balance slightly), I converted the image to LAB mode.

Simply put, LAB mode is a colorspace that allows you to separate luminosity adjustments from color adjustments (see? I told you I’d keep it brief).

Once I was in LAB mode, I added a curves adjustment layer, and moved both the top right and bottom left point closer to each other one block in both the a and b channels. (Don’t see the small blocks? Alt+click anywhere in the curves adjustment box.)

In LAB mode your regular red, green and blue channels are replaced by L, A and B channels.

After you’ve completed the adjustments, flatten the image (Layer > Flatten Image) and return to your regularly scheduled colorspace. Don’t know what that is? Check this out for more colorspace info.

One last thing, for a more intense effect, steepen the curve two boxes. This can work out especially well for punching up otherwise dull photos, but it’s easy to go too far. When I first learned this trick I wanted to go back and re-edit all my old color images, kinda like that wedding right after I got my fisheye lens where I shot 500 photos with it…

Anyway, that’s it for today, next week I’ll be back with another quick and easy lighting tutorial.

Questions? Did I lose you after the first paragraph? E-mail me or leave a comment here and I’ll do my best to answer all of the questions. If you want more Doug (and I mean, who doesn’t), you can find me at my site, my blog, and Twitter.