Budget-Friendly Fashion Photography at Home

1. Introduction: Hello my friends, Devaun Lennox here and welcome to budget friendly fashion photography at home. I'm a fashion and beauty photographer based in Las Vegas and the co-founder of Photography PX, and pxpresets.com. On screen, I'll show you some of my most recent work to get an idea of my photographic style. I've been working now as a professional photographer since 2018, going full-time in the fall of 2020. This Skillshare class is all about showing you the behind the scenes of capturing these kind of images at home comfortably. Throughout this class, I'll teach you the fundamental skills and techniques needed to capture magazine quality images. We'll deconstruct an effective one light setup, cover the necessary gear, the entire post-processing workflow, all in an effort to get you results immediately. We'll also touch on several important considerations to know when shooting at home and tips to get the best results. By the end, you'll be well-equipped to replicate fashion editorials from publications like Vogue, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, Glamour, and InStyle. To keep things simple though, I've broken the course into three sections. The first section covers the prerequisites like gear and the tools needed. We'll also cover considerations about your shooting space, like the total square footage and your walls colors. The second section explores and covers the lighting and camera setup and other considerations to make during the shoot itself. Lastly, the final section explores the post-production techniques and the entire workflow needed to enhance and finalize your images. By the end of this course, you'll have a proven strategy and workflow to capture this style of portraiture with confidence. You'll also be able to do so with a little financial investment. I've aimed this particular class towards intermediate photographers who have a basic understanding of exposure and focal length. But I'll also go through everything in great detail with easy to understand terms. If you're a beginner, you shouldn't feel overwhelmed. If you are a beginner, this class will help give you the proper understanding of fashion photography while avoiding some of the necessary pitfalls along this road, namely spending unnecessary amounts of money on gear. But either way, the skills you'll learn in this class will catapult you into the fashion scene and help you start developing a unique portfolio. I've also included a class project at the end of this course, where you will execute an at-home fashion editorial yourself and you'll share between one and three images from the shoot to the project gallery so we can all learn from your experience and give constructive feedback. During that project I also want you to write a brief description explaining your thinking about the shoot and a bit of context about the shoot itself. With that said, I hope to see you inside and let's get started creating our next front cover image. 2. Studio Space: Hello, my friends. Devuan Linux here, and welcome. I'm excited to see you're here. Let's get started. In this lesson, we'll cover the considerations you'll want to think about for your studio space. Shooting a fashion editorial image that's full length, meaning a photo that captures the subject from head to toe, requires a lot of working distance. Your shooting space or studio must be sufficiently large enough to accommodate. Thankfully, you can replicate most of the effect at home, especially if you have an apartment with a combined living room and dining room space. Over the last four years, I've shot about 100 different subjects in this very fashion, where most of the models heights have ranged from five feet two inches, to six foot five inches, and I've also moved to three separate apartments during this time. Even so, the lighting setup we'll cover later has remained rock solid and reliable. But that's primarily because all of these spaces offer the same general dimensions. The dimensions I'm about to list are the minimums I feel are necessary to achieve this type of image at home. That is, unless you use a smaller background, then your total width can decrease slightly by about three feet. Otherwise, these are the minimums. Take some time right now to measure your space using a tape measure, so you can find the appropriate area to set everything up. These dimensions are as follows. A width of 10 feet, a length, or depth of 20 feet, and a ceiling height of about eight feet. If your house apartment or studio space offers these dimensions, you are clear to capture your subjects at full length at home. However, if you're shooting in a smaller room or space, you'll only be able to capture the subject at three-quarters length, and you may not find that sufficient long-term. At the same time though, spaces larger than described will offer you greater flexibility in the lens or focal length that you can use. In that case, you have quite an advantage. But outside of space, let alone though, you'll also want to consider the color of your home's walls. Ideally, you want the walls painted with a flattened neutral gray, so it's entirely free of color casts and doesn't bounce the light back onto the subject. But for most of us, especially those living in apartments, that's not realistic. The next best option is a neutral white, which is usually standard in most homes. Now if you have the white walls, they'll likely act as a reflector and fill in light on the subject, reducing contrasts, but for this style of portraiture that shouldn't be problematic. Instead, those who had painted walls or walls with vinyl wrapping, will need to be worrying. The colors on these walls will change the photo's color, altering the appearance of both clothing and the subject skin. It will also affect your camera's white balance negatively, so you want to remove that vinyl wrapping or paint the wall long-term, if possible. If that's not possible or that's just simply too impractical, you can flag or box in the subject using a double-sided poster board on each side. We'll cover this particular tool in a future lesson, but it will effectively serve as its own wall and remove any unwanted color casts in the process. It also doubles as a light shaping tool, which is also helpful. But, perfect, now you're aware of the two main considerations for your studio space. Let's discuss the camera and lighting equipment that's necessary. 3. Lighting & Camera Equipment: Hello, my friends. Davon Linux here and welcome back. In this lesson, we'll cover the lighting and camera equipment you'll need to accomplish these types of images at home. Let's first start with the lighting equipment. At a minimum, you'll want a monolight, also known as a strobe, with a flash output power of 150 watts or higher. With 150 watts, you'll have enough power to capture images at higher apertures like F8 or F11, letting you capture the entire subject in sharp detail. The particular unit I use for the headlining image for this course is the Neewer or Godox SK 300, a 150-watt equivalent daylight balanced strobe. You'll also want a trigger for this light or the light you plan on using, be it a flash sync cable connected directly to the camera, or a wireless system that connects to the hot shoe of your camera. In this case, I use the RT16 student flash triggers which connect to the camera talk to you and connect to the light right about here. Next, we'll want a sturdy light stand, I recommend spending a bit more here in opting for heavy duty aluminum light stand, such as the one from impact or photo deoxy. These offer more rugged knobs which don't break after only six months of use, and they also have a higher payload rating to attach more equipment to them. They're only marginally more expensive, but they are a better investment. From there, you'll need a softbox to modify and soften the light. In this case, I use a 60-inch umbrella with a white interior, and from experience, 48-60 inches is the perfect size for this medium, where the light is just soft enough and wraps around the subject. A 60-inch umbrella is manageable in size and doesn't dominate the room like a larger six or eight-foot umbrella. In total for lighting equipment, we're looking at just around $200 USD. As far as camera equipment though, use the camera you already have, but if you don't already have a 50-millimeter F1.8 equivalent lens, then getting one is a must. The 50-millimeter is usually the go to upgrade over the standard 855-millimeter kit lens and it will noticeably improve your image quality, particularly in central sharpness, Boca, and low-light performance. For most manufacturers, the 50-millimeter F1.8 averages around $100 - $150 USD so it's very affordable. But understandably, if you want to skip this particular expense, you can use a kit lens instead and you can capture largely similar images with the kit lens. You may also want to consider a backdrop or a background support system, and a colored seamless paper. This will increase the total by about $100 USD. Something to consider depending on your budget, but mounting an 86-inch paper, then rolling it out, we'll deliver a truly professional result. Otherwise, you can skip this purchase as well and use a well-iron bed sheet or similar fabric clamped to the window sill. This method will require more editing and post-processing though, but at least it's a starting point. Ultimately, the lighting kit is the most important. In either way, we're looking at a highly affordable entry point into fashion editorial of photography, and one that's unlikely to be unapproachable even for the newest photographers out there. But great, now that we've covered the necessary equipment, let's discuss how you position the light. 4. Lighting Setup: Hello my friends. Devaun Lennox here, and welcome back. In this lesson, we'll cover the lighting setup and how to position your strobe. I'll show you a rendering of the lighting setup on screen right now, and we'll cover the distances and heights sequentially. Let's first start by talking about the position of the model relative to the background. If your studio space meets the dimensions we covered in Lesson 1, then place the model so they're five feet away from the background. Doing so will allow us to place the light further away from the background, reducing the amount of light that reaches it, and this separation lets it fall off to a more subtle color rather than remain fully colored and likely overexposed. I'll show you the difference between having the model stand directly next to the background and five feet away from the background Right now. As you can see, there is a noticeable difference between these images and the photo's aesthetic. Next, let's discuss the positioning of the strobe. You'll want to place the stroke at a 45-degree angle to the flattering side of the model's face, and you'll position it about three to five feet away from them. For example, if my right side is my good side, you'd put the light on my left side or camera right. Doing so forces my head to turn left towards the light and will help you capture my good side in every single photo. This is a subtle technique, but one that prevents the models from disliking future images that you show them. From there, adjust the light stand so that the bottom of the umbrella sits around five feet tall in height. This is a rough value, not an exact measure, but generally, five feet is high enough for most subjects to get the catchlight positioned correctly in the top third of the eye. That position also means that the light coming from the strobe falls correctly on their face without causing harsh, unflattering shadows, particularly here and here. I want to note something important here as well. When we set up the light like this, the model only has about a foot of room to maneuver before the light changes dramatically, so there's some flexibility here, but there's not much. Keep that in mind while you're shooting. The final variable and something to also experiment with is feathering the light. You can either point the umbrella directly at the subject, making the light somewhat more directional and harsh by contrast. Or you can feather it by turning it slightly away from them, softening its effect. It's a small variable, but one that changes the photo's aesthetic. But congratulations. From here you have the complete lighting setup. Position yourself a few feet away and start experimenting with the competition. Now that we've covered the lighting setup, let's talk about camera settings and how you'll set up your camera. 5. Camera Setup: Hello, my friends, Davon Linux here and welcome back. In this lesson, we'll cover your camera settings and some pointers on getting the best results. First, let's start with camera settings. Since we're shooting indoors in a studio setting, our exposure will be dictated primarily by our aperture and ISO settings. Shutter speed will only come into play to sync with our flash and remove any potential handshake while shooting. But otherwise, it doesn't play the same role as other forms of photography. Now, since we have complete control over the flash, out the power or the amount of light reaching our subject, it's best to set our camera to its base ISO. At the base ISO we'll capture the highest quality images with the best dynamic range and least amount of noise. For most cameras, this value will be ISO 100 or 200. When you're ready to shoot, start by setting your camera to one of these values. Next, our aperture setting, which determines our depth of field and how much of our subject is in sharp focus. For this type of photography, an aperture setting of F8 - F11 is best as these values provide enough depth of field to capture subject from head to toe and they'll also leave some working room for the subject to move to capture their motion as well. Note you're welcome to explore other aperture settings that are lower in value, such as F5.6 or F4 and these settings will merely create a more out-of-focus background. They can also be helpful to reduce any fine details on the model skin and high blemishes though, which makes the post-production process easier. But in general, F8 is an excellent starting point for this medium. So when you're ready to shoot, start by setting your lens to an aperture of F8. Lastly, our shutter speed, which is the least important aspect of exposure in this form of photography. Generally, a shutter speed of one, one-twenty-fifth of a second is an excellent starting point in most situations. It's a value that's fast enough to remove any camera shake when shooting handheld. But it's also a value that's supported by most strobes for their maximum flash sync speed. Note, you're also welcome to experiment here by using slower shutter speeds if you want to capture motion blur in your images. Great, now that we've covered the camera settings, let's cover some pointers on getting the best results. If your camera supports face or eye detection, enable that feature and set the auto-focusing area to the top third of the frame. The reasoning to put the auto-focus point here is that we will be mainly shooting portrait images from head to toe or full length. You'll usually be holding the camera in portrait orientation rather than landscape, so setting the focus area or AF point to the top third of the frame will speed up how fast your camera focuses, reducing its focus acquisition time and it's a small tip that'll help you capture more consistently in-focus images. Next, if your camera has accurate and reliable continuous auto-focusing or AFC, you're welcome to use that feature. Otherwise, using face or eye detection with single-shot auto-focusing or AFS will give you the best results. Next, let's talk about white-balance. Auto white-balance will provide a close enough result for newer cameras to avoid any extravagant color correction requirements in post-processing. But for old cameras, mostly those manufactured before 2018, use the flash white-balance preset instead. Alternatively, you can manually dial in a value between 4,500 and 5,600 Kelvin using the Kelvin setting, if you know your lights manufactured color temperature, and doing so will give you a more precise color. From there, you'll want to take a test shot of your subject, then evaluate the rear LCD to look at the exposure and you'll also want to double-check the exposure on the histogram as well and make sure you're not clipping the highlights specifically. In this form of photography, it's best to shoot underexposed by about a third of a stop and avoid blowing up the highlights, especially on the subject's face since you can't recover these details in post-processing. However, you can always increase the exposure and lift the shadows after the fact. But with that said, those are the camera settings and the general tips on how you can capture the best images. In the following lesson, we will discuss other onset considerations and then head into the post-production workflow. 6. Other considerations: Hello my friends, Davon Linux here and welcome back. In this lesson we'll cover two final considerations. Those are whether you should use a reflector to help reduce contrast or should you tether to review images while shooting? For the course image, I did choose to add a reflector opposite of the model to help fill in the shadows. I ended up using 236 by 48 inch poster boards taped together to stand 8 feet tall when unfolded. I positioned two of these next to the model to act as what we in the industry call V flats. Using this kind of poster board is what I was referring to in a previous lesson when I talked about boxing in the model if you have colored walls. But instead of trying to remove any color cast, I'm using these poster boards to reflect light back onto the model. These poster boards serve as a gentle light source of their own on the cameras left side to fill in any of the shadows. On screen right now I'll show you the effect of adding these reflectors compared to removing them, so you can see the difference. It's important to mention though, you don't have to use these reflectors or a reflector. It's an optional step that depends on the type of aesthetic you're going for. If you want an image that's more moody and dramatic, skipping and the reflector is the ideal way to get that effect. Otherwise if you want something that only has a bit of contouring and shadow, this reflector will help offset the shadows caused by our lighting itself. Alternatively, if you don't want to set up a reflector at all you can position the model and the backdrop to be closer to your wall. That is if you have a white wall. Having the model stand 3 to 4 feet away from the wall will function identically to a reflector and it will fill in the shadows. Next you may want to consider connecting your camera to your computer if you have a laptop so you can transfer the photos in real-time to view them on larger display. This process is known as tethering and it's an excellent means to assess fine details and clothing, makeup, hair, or even your lighting. It's also the perfect tool for seeing the adjustments you're making in real time such as fine tuning the angle of the light or showing your model the amazing images you're capturing so far. If you want to set up this workflow, you can find plenty of resources online that discuss how to get this configured with Adobe Lightroom using a hot folder but setting that up in detail is outside the scope of this class. Either way though, those are the two final considerations you'll want to make while shooting. Now that you're fully equipped to start capturing fashion editorial images at home. In the next section we'll dive into the post-production workflow from start to finish so you can enhance the images you've captured and take them to a professional level. 7. Fixing Exposure: Hello my friends, Davon Linux here. Welcome back. In this lesson, we'll start the post processing workflow to enhance and finalize our image. I've included this raw DNG or Digital Negative File in the course materials. Feel free to follow along with the following lessons if you have Adobe Photoshop. With that said though, let's move into the first steps of the workflow, which is refining our exposure. Here we are in Adobe Photoshop, we're working with a DNG file. Opening the image will prompt the Camera Raw dialog window in Photoshop. This is our first starting point. In Camera Raw we're going to focus our attention on the basic tab. Here, we're greeted with several parameters focused on exposure, color, and detail control. However, we'll only adjust the middle group of settings to refine our exposure. For this image, I captured the photo slightly underexposed by about a half a stop, and I did so to help preserve the texture and the folds of the shirt here and her hair here, to avoid these areas specifically from overexposing and losing detail. But now it's time to correct the exposure for the remainder of the image. We'll do this by adjusting the highlights, shadow and exposure sliders. I'll first start with the Exposure slider and use the up and down keys on the keyboard to adjust its value. While I do this, I pay particularly close attention to the top right RGB graph and read out. These values indicate the brightness of the colors present in the image. When adjusting the highlights, I want to make sure the brightest area of the photo, which is right here, doesn't go past 250 across the red, green, and blue spectrums. If it does, you'll get a printed image that has strictly white paper in that area and no fine detail. It's something to watch out for while doing this. While we do this particular step, have your cursor over the brightest section of the photo, then adjust the slider bit by bit until that area reaches a maximum of 250 across the board. Important to note here, you can also toggle the clipping indication in this histogram by tapping the two up arrows, which will make it easier to judge areas close to losing detail. When I toggle the topmost clipping indication, you notice that Photoshop presents red highlights on the background of the photo. This red highlights shows where the image is overexposed beyond 255 across the red, green, or blue channels and now losing detail. I'm going to keep these areas in mind and we'll come back later in the post processing workflow to adjust this particular problem and the background exposure separately. I have no fear about that. But for the time being, let's focus our attention on the model and ensure both her skin and the clothing are detailed. I find that a value of plus 35 works well for this image, bringing up the overall exposure, but not so far to blow out the highlight areas on the subject. Great. Now since the highlights are quite bright as is on this image, I'm going to skip that slider altogether. But do know that adjusting the highlight slider for some images will be necessary to achieve the correct exposure. With that said though, let's adjust the shadows. The Shadows slider will help lift the exposure of the shadow areas, but it also reduces the contrast of the image. We'll have to come back and add contrast to correct this later on. But here again, while adjusting this setting, I also pay particular attention to the RGB readout. Thankfully adjusting this slider doesn't affect our problem areas in the background specifically, so no issues there. Instead it only lists the dark areas on our model. I find that a value of plus 35 here as well is also perfect. Lastly, I'll reduce the color temperature slightly from 5,900 Kelvin to 5,600 Kelvin. For this particular image, I did set a custom white balance using a white piece of paper. However, since that isn't a true neutral gray card, it's generally a few hundred Kelvin degrees off, but it does get cold enough, especially regarding the tint or hue of the light. I will reduce some of the yellow and cool the photo down slightly to my lights color temperature, which is 5,600 Kelvin or daylight balanced. Now by pressing the eye icon, we can toggle back and forth to review our changes. Great, we're finished adjusting the exposure of our image. Now hit open in the bottom right corner to open the file. In the next lesson we'll crop the photo and clean up the background. 8. Cropping & Background Cleaning: Hello my friends Devon Lennox here and welcome back. In this lesson, we will crop the image and clean up the distractions in the background. To crop the photo head over into the Tools Panel and select the crop tool or use the keyboard shortcut C. In the crop tool, we'll see our aspect ratio in the top-left along with some options for straightening, grids, and deleting crop pixels. Know if you're planning on cropping an image specifically to upload on Instagram or other social media platforms, I've found that using a custom aspect ratio works best. That ratio is as follows, 8.5 by 10.7. You can enter these values by selecting Ratio in the drop-down menu, then filling in the adjacent fields here. From here, I will adjust the crop slightly to remove some of the unwanted space around the model. Then once you have the desired framing for the crop, hit the check mark icon in the top panel to commit the changes. Now, we could call it good from here and move on. For many of your images, you don't need to do much else. But I'm going to quickly show you how to remove reflectors and other unwanted items from the background that you can see here on the left-hand side. This technique I'll demonstrate now is also perfect for making a one-to-one ratio or square photograph. Let's undo a crop by using the command or Windows Z key. Now the easiest technique to do this is selecting a good area of the background, then resizing it using the Transform function to fill in the distracting area. Let me show you that now. In the Tools Panel, click the rectangular marquee tool or use the keyboard shortcut M. Now select the bottom of section of the background, then drag to the top. Careful not to choose the model or the part of the background you want to remove. Once we have that selected, select ''Edit'' and then Free Transform or use the keyboard shortcut command or Windows T. Now using the transform points, click and hold the outermost edge, then hold the Shift key and drag towards the outside of the background. Doing this warps the background's pixels, elongating them and effectively copies that area to the selection we want to remove. Note, you can see these warped and stretched pixels on some backgrounds if you zoom in at 100% or more. But in most situations, this technique is virtually unnoticeable and I found it from experience. It's the easiest way to extend a background by far. Once you're happy with how the transform looks, click the checkmark icon in the top panel to commit the changes. Now let's de-select the area by clicking Select, then de-select, or using the keyboard shortcut command or Windows D. Great, quick and easy way to solve that problem. Now let's remove the scuff marks on the background itself. I'll zoom into the scuff marks on the floor now, these. To remove them will use the Clone Stamp tool to select the Clone Stamp tool, head to the Tools Panel, then select the Clone Stamp tool or use the keyboard shortcut S. Now, adjust the brush size to slightly larger than the problem area using the bracket keys, then use the Alt or Option key to select an area to sample and paint over the problem area. Great problem solved. Now let's re-sample and fix all of the remaining scuffs. Perfect. You may also notice a few spots on the top of the background with strain circles of the darker exposure. Here and here. These blemishes are usually caused by dust on the sensor or a strange fold and a seamless paper itself. We can fix these easily by using the Patch tool or the Content-Aware Fill action. For some blemishes, the Patch tool will work perfectly, but it doesn't always work. However, for this top blemish here, it will work great. Let's use it here in the Tools Panel, select the Patch tool or use the keyboard shortcut J. Now, draw a circle around the problem area, then click hold and drag to replace the selection. Great. Now, to remove these last two areas, we'll want to fill them with their surrounding pixels. To do that, we'll use the Content-Aware Fill action. First, make a selection of the problem area using the Lasso tool, which you can find in the Tools Panel or using the keyboard shortcut L. Once you have a rough selection, select ''Edit'', then Content-Aware Fill. Now, press ''Okay'' in the following dialogue box. Perfect, problem-solved. Now let's repeat that process to remove the other blemish. Done. There we have it. We've now cropped the image and cleaned up the background. In the next lesson, we'll tackle cleaning up blemishes on the skin. 9. Skin Cleaning (Healing Brush): Hello, my friends [inaudible] here and welcome back. In this lesson, we'll clean up any unwanted blemishes on the model's skin. We'll do this with a single tool, in this case the healing brush tool. But before we do, I'm going to merge all of our layers into a new top layer. Doing this will let us quickly review the changes and also give us a fail-safe if we go too far. To do this, unlock the background layer. Now select each of the remaining layers by holding Command or the Windows key. Once selected, hold the Alt or Option key, then press the Hamburger icon in the right. Then click 'Merge layers". Perfect. Now we can perform the skin clean up. Select the healing brush by clicking its icon in the tools panel or using the keyboard shortcut J. Know if you use the shortcut, Photoshop defaults to opening the spot healing brush, which works differently. Select the healing brush manually. If you find this next step, it behaves differently. Now anytime you press the shortcut, it'll correctly select the healing brush rather than the spot healing brush. Let's first start by tackling some of the blemishes on our model's face. First, adjust the brush size to be slightly larger than problem area by using the Bracket keys. Then use the Alt or Option key to select an area to sample and click and hold to paint over the problem area. Great. Blemish removed. Now we'll repeat the sample and painting technique for the rest of the blemishes. I'll now toggle the layer on and off so you can see the changes so far. Now that we've taken care of those areas, let's zoom out and evaluate the changes. Looks good. Let's tackle the next area. Press and hold the Space bar to temporarily select the hand tool to move around the canvas. Let's go ahead and remove some of these small blemishes on her arms. Great. Let's zoom out and reevaluate the changes. Looks natural. Let's move down to the knees, legs, and shoes. Great. Now let's zoom back out and give the image of final look over. Perfect. Everything looks good and I'm not noticing anything else that needs addressing. Our model has great skin, so we don't need to do very much. But the sample and painting process I showed in this video is the general workflow to remove most blemishes. We could use other more advanced techniques, but I find that this one is simple enough for beginners, and enthusiast photographers to grasp, and it's unlikely to overwhelm you as well. Now that we've completed the skin clean up, let's move into dodge and burn. 10. Dodge & Burn: Hello my friends, Devon Linux here and welcome back. In this lesson, we'll dodge and burn the image. If you're not familiar with dodge and burn, this is a retouching technique where you selectively paint and highlights or shadows. Dodging refers to painting and highlights or lightening an area while burning refers to painting and shadows or darkening an area. Dodge and burn is an excellent tool to correct any mistakes with lighting as you're learning, or to even replicate multiple light setups. But it's also an excellent way to add contrast to a photo selectively. Will be doing a combination of both for this image. Let's first start by dodging or lightening some of the problem areas. For me, those are the dark patch on her arms, the shadows on her face, and it'd be nice to contour the shoes slightly. Let's do this by selecting the dodge tool in the tools panel or using the keyboard shortcut O. In the topmost panel, you'll see some settings to adjust the dodge brush, like its range and exposure amount. These settings are perfect as is, so no need to change them. But let's go ahead and duplicate our background layer, which will help us adjust the opacity of this effect later on, you can duplicate a layer by clicking it and holding it and then dragging it down towards the plus icon. Alternatively, you can right-click the layer, then select duplicate layer. I'll rename this layer to dodge so it's more clear as we go along as well. I'm also going to change this layer blend mode from normal to luminosity. The reason for this small change is to avoid the dodge brush from altering the saturation of the areas we paint in. In some cases, or situations, especially like this image, it can increase the saturation slightly, but that's not the effect that we're going for so if you find that increases the saturation at any point, changing the blend mode will solve that problem. But that said, let's go ahead and paint over the various problem areas on the image. To do that, we can paint on the duplicate layer we created earlier, then adjust the brush size as needed then paint. Don't worry about painting over the edges it won't be noticeable once we finalize it. You may also think this looks heavy handed right now as is and you're right, but no worries we will reduce this effect after painting in the appropriate areas. Now that we've applied the effect, let's tone it down and make it more subtle. To do that, we'll adjust the opacity amount in layers tab I find that a value around 50 percent leaves the shadow areas, but not so much so that it looks artificial. Let me toggle this layer on and off so you can see the before and after effect. It's a small change, but one that's noticeable and it really helps. Perfect. Now let's do the opposite effect by using the burn tool on the image. Here we'll burn the bright areas of the background, the hand, and add some contouring to the image as well. To select the burn tool, and navigate to the tools panel, then select the burn tool. You can also use the shortcut key O after selecting it to engage it immediately. Now, let's duplicate our base or bottom-most layer and using the same process as before and now I'll rename this layer to burn. For this effect, we want to accentuate shadow areas or selectively pulled down highlight areas close to overexposing. Let's start with the hair and paint around the shadow areas. I'm also going to change this layer blend mode from normal to luminosity. I'm going to accentuate the shadows on her cheek next, essentially contouring it. Now I'm moving down towards the arm. Here I'm focusing on reducing some of the highlights I remember being close to or exposing before in the first lesson. Now let's tackle the background. Great. Those are the main areas to darken. Let's add these effects to a group so we can toggle the entire change together at once. To do that, select both layers by holding the Shift key and clicking them, then click on the group icon. Now that we've applied the effect, let's tone it down and make it more subtle. Now you can see the effect as I toggle it on and off. It's a huge change that evens out the lighting and adds more definition to our model. But that's the basic premise of using the dodge and burn technique. It's a powerful tool to adjust the exposure of an image and you can really change the lighting as you see fit. But now that we've completed dodging and burning the image, let's move on to color correction. 11. Color Correction: Hello, my friends. Devaun Linux here. Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to correct the colors of our image. Depending on your monitor or the device you're viewing this tutorial on, you may not notice that there's a yellow cast over the entire photo. It's subtle, but if you look closely, you'll eventually see it. We're going to fix that particular problem. We'll do this by applying a threshold adjustment layer over the image. You can find that particular function in the Adjustments Layer menu at the bottom of the list. In the threshold window we'll adjust the threshold level slider downwards and stop just before the image goes completely white, I find that a level of 14 works perfectly here. Now in the tools panel, select the "Color Sampler Tool" or use the keyboard shortcut "I". With this tool selected zoom into one of the black areas in the image at a pixel level and click to place a sample point. We're doing this step here to sample the darkest area of the photo, which we we'll use shortly to set our black point. It's important to select the darkest location of the image correctly as it determines our color correction and eventual curve settings. Now that we sampled the black point of the photo, let's do the opposite and select the white point. Note for some images, especially those that are moodier or more low-key, you may not find a white point in that photo so skip the step and don't use the model's teeth or a specular highlight, say a light reflecting off metal as your white point, this technique won't work for those samples since the color needs to be detailed and perfectly white. With that said, let's zoom out and get back to our threshold adjustment layer. Adjust the threshold level slider upwards, now stop just before the image goes completely dark. Don't go all the way to the top here to a value of 255, doing that will likely cause issues since you'll be sampling a specular highlight at that point, I find that a threshold value of 247 works perfectly for this image instead. Now select the "Color Sampler Tool" again, then zoom into the image and click to place a sample point. Here now we're sampling the lightest area of the photo, which we will use shortly to set our white point. Great, we sampled our black and white points in the photo. Now let's zoom out and head back into the "Layer Panel". Now we can delete this threshold adjustment layer by dragging it to the trash icon since we don't need this particular adjustment anymore. Now with these points set, we can use them as our basis for black and white values. To do that, let's add a "Curves Adjustment Layer" and you can find that function in the "Adjustment Layer" menu. In the curves adjustment layer on the left side, you'll see some eyedropper-style icons. These are the sample selection functions to set either the black, gray or white points. Let's first select our black point though. We'll do this by clicking the topmost "Eyedropper Icon". Then we'll click the first point we marked on the image. That point is located in the pants. Note it's important to zoom in to a pixel level here to ensure you're selecting these points correctly. If you're even a few pixels off, the effect could be different. Great. Let's select the white point by clicking the bottom "Eyedropper Tool". Now let me toggle the changes on and off and you can see both the effect on color and the final exposure. As you can see doing this lifted the yellow haze on the image, neutralizing the color and also refined our exposure slightly, but crucially, it refined the contrast of the photo as well now making it pop and stand out. Perfect, we are now finished color-correcting the photo. In the next lesson, we'll sharpen the image and accentuate those fine details. 12. Sharpening: Hello my friends. Davon Linux here. Welcome back. In this lesson, we're going to sharpen our image and add that last bit of pop. There are many ways to sharpen our photos in Photoshop, but for this workflow, I'll focus on using the unsharpened mask which works well for most in general sharpening and needs to apply the unsharpened mask will first want to merge our layers into a new top layer. To do this, select each of the layers by holding the Command or Windows key. Once selected, hold the Alt or Option key, then press the hamburger icon on the right, then click "Merge Layers." This will create a single merged layer of all of our selected layers from before. Now select that merged layer. Then in the top panel select "Filter, " "Sharpen, " and "Unsharpened mask." I'll zoom into the image slightly at 50% view and reposition the window to focus on the model's face. Now, in the unsharpened mass dialog window, set the amount to 500% and the radius one and two pixels. Then adjust the threshold level just high enough to focus the sharpening on the eyes, lips, and hair. I find that a radius of 1.2 and a threshold of 22 works perfectly for this image. Once you're happy with the settings, hit "OK" to commit the changes. Now navigate to the top panel, select "Edit" and Fade Unsharpened Mask. In the fade dialogue window, change the blend mode from normal to luminosity. The reasoning behind this step is to remove any magenta color cast from the sharpening halos. For some images, the unsharpened mass filter can have an unwanted color cast, so by doing this, we remove that color cast altogether. Great, hit, "Okay" in the dialog window to commit the changes. Now let's duplicate the sharpened image by dragging the layer down towards the plus icon. Now I'm going to group both of these layers so we can adjust the sharpening globally after the fact. To do that, hold the Shift key and click both layers, then press the Group icon. Note, you don't have to group these layers but it gives you more control over this process and the sharpening as a whole. If you do though, unpack the group, here, we're going to change the blend mode of each of these layers. The first layer I'll set to lighten and the second darken. Now we can adjust the opacity of the dark areas of the images and the light ones separately. I find that an opacity of about 80% for the lightened layer and 50% for the darkened layer works perfectly. But we can also reduce the opacity of both together by adjusting the groups opacity. Granted 100% works great for this image and really makes our model pop. Great, we've finished sharpening our image. In the next lesson, we'll export it for delivery and uploading to social media. 13. Exporting: Hello, my friends. [inaudible] here, welcome back. In this lesson, we'll export our image for print and also cover how to export it for social media. Let's first export the image for printing or archiving in our photo library. To export the image go to the top panel then File, Export, and Save for Web Legacy. We do it this way to prevent any color miscalculations between what we see in Adobe Photoshop and how the final JPEG file is encoded. Exporting As sometimes causes miscalculations so this is a way to prevent that from happening. In the Save for Web dialog window that appears change the quality to 100 percent and check Embed Color profile, now hit "Save" and select the destination for the image. Photoshop will now export the image to the selected folder. Great, we saved our high-resolution JPEG file for printing or archiving in our libraries. Now, let's export the file that will upload to social media in the web. We navigate to the top panel, then File, Export, and Save for Web Legacy. Here in the Save for Web dialog window, change the file type from JPEG to PNG 24, then adjust the percent value here so the final file size is under 1 megabyte. I find that a value of 28 percent is perfect for this image. Now hit "Save" and select the destination for the image, and there we have it. There are our completed images ready for print or ready to showcase to the world. 14. Closing thoughts: There you have it my friends. There's budget friendly fashion photography at home, broken down from start to finish. I want to say thank you for taking the time to watch this class. I hope the techniques and skills I showcased throughout this class have helped you meaningfully, and I hope they've demystified how any of us can capture magazine or the images at home. Of course, there's plenty of value in renting or purchasing a commercial studio space but the reality is that you can replicate the results at home without forking out another mortgage in the process. There's also no reason why you have to use the highest end gear for this form of photography either. Anyone can do this, it's just a matter of knowing the basic techniques needed and having a confident workflow. From there, find good models and collaborate with a solid team of hair and makeup artist. But now you're fully equipped with the techniques and the workflow necessary. We covered the necessary tools like lights and your camera setup, then how to use them, what to consider both onset and beforehand, and the full post-processing workflow. It's up to you to take the baton from here and go forth and show your vision to the world. Speaking of showing your vision to the world, your class project is to upload your very own fashion editorial. I encourage you to get creative and also not to be a perfectionist, especially if this is your first attempt at this medium. I also welcome you to post any works in progress or even fully completed projects of prior. Either way, the goal is for us to learn and grow together. If you have any feedback or follow-up questions though, for us regarding this class, please let me know by reaching out through YouTube or email via our website. Those are our most active platforms. But I've been your host Devaun Lennox, photographypx.com. We'll see you next time.