Newborn Photography: Prepping, Posing, and Lifestyle

1. Introduction: Hey, I'm Tabitha. I'm a lifestyle portrait photographer which means I photograph people in their space with their family, creating these raw moments where they're allowed to be their real selves. I have a huge passion for this work because it tells a story, it describes these people as who they were when they were taken. They remember the memories that they have with each other. They feel comfortable and they're allowed to be real. I think it's so important to take these pictures. With this class, we're going to be focusing on lifestyle newborn photography. Photographing a newborn baby in its space, in a crib, it probably doesn't slip in. Getting these pictures of these sweet tiny babies in mom and dad's arms and how important it is to capture these moments even if mom and dad feel like they haven't gotten enough sleep or whatever. It's so important to get them in the picture too because things change so fast. By capturing these moments in their correct spaces, it adds so much more to the story. Whether you're a brand new mom who just wants to take a good picture of your baby for Instagram to share with your friends and family, or you already do photography but you've been intimidated by photographing brand new babies, I feel like this class is a great first step into getting more comfortable posing a brand new baby or holding a baby. Maybe you don't have that much experience actually handling a blink, tiny, fragile person. I'm going to lead you through some tools and props that I like to use to keep the baby comfortable for the pictures. Also I'll lead you through how to swaddle the little baby so that they look like a cute little newborn nugget. You can photograph them all stylized. Newborn sessions are a little elusive, you know they happen but all you ever see are the end result. I think that being able to see a little bit of behind the scenes you'll get a better idea of what to expect if you've recently booked a newborn session and you've never done one before. For your class project, I think you probably know I want you to photograph a newborn baby. If you tried taking newborn photos before and maybe it didn't go like you expected, I want to see your before and your after. I want to be able to show you side-by-side how you've improved. Hopefully you've improved. I'll lead you through editing so you can see how I take a picture straight out of camera to a final image that would end up on a wall in someone's home that they cherish forever and ever. Yeah, I'm eager to show you how I do it. Let's jump right in. 2. Tools: Before we dive right into tools, I wanted to just let you know that aside from your camera, there's two other factors that are so important to having a successful newborn session. One is timing and the other is location. Timing is important because really the best time to take a newborn picture is in the first 10 days of that baby's life. Obviously like day 1 and 2, they're going to be at the hospital, and stuff like that. But really I just try super hard not to shoot after those first 10 days. The first 10 days are critical because the baby is so super tired, it's bones haven't fully formed yet, so it's really flexible pretty much it just wants to sleep the whole session. Obviously, you're going to have to feed it and change it. There's a lot of breaks that happen during a newborn session, but pretty much, you've got a tired, bendable baby that you can really ,really work with. A lot of littler babies tend to have more jaundiced skins, their skin is yellow, maybe the whites of their eyes are a little bit yellow. Again, if you're shooting in this early window, they tend to sleep a lot and so you wouldn't see the whites of their eyes, and you can tone their skin a little bit in Photoshop if necessary. Timing again, if I shoot after those first 10 windows, usually the baby's skin starts to peel and that takes forever to edit. They get a little crankier because they're hungrier or they're growing, they're getting used to being a person, and they want to be in mom's arms the whole time and, so really just try for that first 10 day window. That's when an ideal session happens. So timing and location. Location is important because if you're going to shoot newborn or lifestyle type newborn pictures, you need to be aware of where the best place in the house is going to be. So if it's your house, you've got time to practice, work with the spots, work with the rooms to try and get the most ideal spot for your pictures. For me, it's going to be right here in my kitchen with this big back door window, with the soft thin curtain on it. That is where I like to shoot, then I've got these engineered hardwood floors that are a great backdrop if I'm shooting a top-down photo. If you're going into their house, it can be a little crazy to try and scout out the best shot. Don't be afraid to move stuff around, shoot in kitchens. You can hope that their nursery has a nice big window, you can open up the blinds so that the light comes through and it's nice and bright. Work with what you have. The nice thing about lifestyle pictures is they don't have to be perfect, your goal is real, and so using what you have and working with the lighting that you're given is going to be optimal. Then again, shooting a good time of day. Obviously, don't shoot after the sun is gone down because then all you have to work with is the lights in the room, which I definitely do not advise. I always, always, always shoot newborn pictures with natural light unless I'm doing a designated studio shot with studio lights that's a fringe case scenario. For 98 percent of the newborn pictures that I take are taken with natural light coming from a big window, midday. Newborn sessions typically lasts 2-5 hours long. Really take this into consideration when you're shooting and where you're shooting, and you can work with that. So Tool. Wrapping back to tools, your camera is super, super important. I always shoot with a DSLR when I do newborn pictures. For a long time, I've been using the Nikon D7000, a few years I've been using it, and I have a 35 millimeter DX Nikon lens on there. That lens was 198 bucks, it was super cheap, I got it, because it's fast, it's great in low light, and it works with the Nikon D7000 because that camera has a crop sensor. It's really good, more on the budget and set up. But I love it. You're able to shoot down at lower aperture, so you get that really creamy blur in the background, and you're able to shoot quicker so you can use faster shutter speeds because the aperture's wide open. It works if the lighting is not perfect, if it's a little dark, and so it's really a flexible setup. I've recently upgraded to Nikon D750, which I love. It's a full-frame sensor, so the pictures are bigger and I had to upgrade my lenses also, which was the whole thing, but I'm super excited to be able to take full-frame photos with full-frame lenses anyway. I'm just saying you actually don't need a pile of cameras and lenses to get successful pictures. At the last newborn session I did, I actually took a few with my phone in the interim just so I could send her a few right after she left, so she'd have one to post on Instagram or whatever. I edited the photo with the VSCO app and it actually turned out really good for an iPhone. This is a success plus. I was really actually pretty impressed with how the picture worked. I don't have that fancy portrait mode which blurs the background, if I had, that, probably would have been just even crazier or whatever. But anyway, so you don't need a pile of cameras and lenses to do a newborn session. You can shoot with your phone, use what you have. Another thing that's super important, I'm 5'2', 5'3', so a step stool is a lot of help for me. I use this just in the kitchen usually when I'm doing those top-down pictures. I have to get further away because of the way that my lens crops, and so having a step stool is nice because it just adds an extra foot helping me get the crop that I want. Next up, we have this as my heat dish. You can use any portable space heater on low, really, really be careful when you're using a heat dish because, I mean first of all babies love, love being warm. So when I use a heat dish, I always make sure I have an arm or a leg or something between the heat dish in the baby, so I know that the baby is not getting too warm from the heat dish. I always use it on low and I try not to get too close. It's a pretty conservative way to use it, because this thing can get very hot and I definitely don't want to scorch the baby. In my last session, I was swaddling the baby, and she was just crying, and crying, she was so sad and I didn't know what was wrong. I realized she's probably freezing because she's naked and I'm trying to put a sweater on her, and so I leaned her more toward the heat dish, and almost instantly she just settled right down, and so I'm like, "Oh" I'm so glad I had this heat dish because I normally keep my house at 72, 73 degrees Fahrenheit. It's pretty cold, especially for a baby who just came out of a human body. Heat dishes are awesome, space heaters, whatever you can use to keep it warm. If you don't have one of these, you can just turn on your heater a little bit and sweat while you're taking your pictures. I've done that. Sometimes, you'd know you just do what you have to do. So we have that. There's a noise machine app. If you can't get your house perfectly quite, sometimes that's not ideal. Babies need a little bit of white noise. I downloaded a noise machine app called Relaxed Melodies. It's free. You can pay for more exotic sounds or whatever. But let me just, this is waterfall. So peaceful. If you just have a waterfall going or maybe you want to have rain, it's a rainstorm, I know it sounds like a leaky bathroom. White noise. You got your white noise, baby has something to ground itself to. I really love this app because you can create your own, you can do a waterfall, thunder, cavern and it combines the three sounds and really just customizes it to make it what you like. The sounds are really high-quality. Again, it's a free app. I really liked it. It was nice because we're finishing our basement right now, and so they were pounding drywall into the ceiling. It was super noisy and I'm trying to photograph this baby who's trying to sleep and there's pounding. So the noise machine helped drown it out a little bit. For those props, I also have a background stand and a posing pillow, basically just a giant hockey puck. It's a big circle fabric with a long skinny circle fabric. Also together, I saw these online, and they were very expensive. I was like, "Oh I could I just make my own." So I did. I went to my fabric store and I bought vinyl fabric, heavy-duty needles and some Velcro, and I sewed it altogether and then filled it with those little styrofoam mini, little pellet balls and put them in through this little slot, and that is how that came to be. So this is cool because it basically replaces a couch. Typically, what I would do for a lot of newborn pictures is I would scoot a couch as close to the window as possible, and then I would lay a blanket on the couch with some support pillows underneath to prop the baby up, and that was my typical go-to session, so this just replaces that. So posing pillow, I have two light stands with these little clamps attached to the top. I suspend some PVC pipe across them, and then I take, this is a yard of white polyester fur fabric, and I drape it over the top and I clamp it here, and this is my go-to setup. This is where I lay the baby down right here in the middle, I make an indentation, so it gives it a little nest. I would shoot either at a 90-degree angle to the window or the window light would be shining right on it. You can photograph the baby from above, from the side, get nice close-up shots. Then lastly are these little bean bags. So I just made these with a scrap of fabric and some white rice. I just sewed it into this little square. These are awesome because you can toss them in the microwave for like 30 seconds or a minute and get them nice and warm. You don't want them too hot and then you can toss them right underneath your blanket. That will help keep the baby warm from underneath. Next, let's talk about props. 3. Props: This blanket, I technically consider a prop. Again, this is polyester white fur fabric. It's nice because it's super neutral and it adds a little bit of texture without being overwhelming. I have a very glamorous garbage bag of my other bag drops, it's warmer Sherpa fabric that's really soft. I have this crinkly blanket from Ikea, that's pretty fine adds a nice texture, and then I have this last fur which is a cool great topi color. They're all very similar. They add just that warms softness to the photo. Then lastly I have a big giant comforter. I bought this at Target for 25 or $35. It's awesome because you can toss it on anybody's bed and it makes their bed really bright and dreamy. You can photograph babies there over their parents. You can leave this out on the floor and it just gives you that mark, pillow top look. I think it's super effective, really pretty bright, clean looking pictures with this. Next, I want to talk about wraps. Basically swaddling is very common in a lot of stylized newborn pictures, and a lot of newborn babies are swaddled because it's comforting, helps keep them all nice and tight. I have a bunch of different swaddles that I use. These two are flannel, these are honestly big enough to be a blanket. I could use this as a background if I wanted to, it's just as big square piece of flannel fabric. This is a lot bigger than I typically use for my swaddle, so I don't use these a whole lot. This is actually, I got as a swaddle, so it's actually made for swaddling. It's this really stretchy Ghazi fabric. It's see-through. It's got a tone of stretch to it. I can really maneuver around the baby to get them nice and tight. It's just a long scarf. I can fold it in half or I can just wrap it around, tuck it in. I'll show you how to swaddle, after this. I have some swaddles that I made myself. I had an old Jersey sheet. It was just white and I dyed a bunch of scraps of it with Rit dye, another fabric dye. This one I dyed myself. It has a raw edge, it's a little ugly, you could sew it, or honestly, when this fabric stretches, when it's pulled, it rolls, which is cute. I think this one was from a fitted sheet. I just open up the fitted sheet, it was all clean and I opened it up and I cut it in just big long chunks so that I could have different swaddles to use. I did this one a forest green. I tried to make brown, It turned out orange, but the orange is cute. Worked out at the soft color. While I was dying those, I also dyed some cheesecloth. If you buy cheesecloth, it comes on a long white piece and it's really delicate. It's almost like a spider web. It's very thin and dreepy. This is a chunk of cheesecloth, and I would say that's probably a yard this way. It's like three feet by six feet. This piece I usually fold in half just because it's so big and then I use this as my swaddle, wrap it around the baby. I'll show you a picture where I've used that. They come bright white. I bought this in a package. You can buy it on a bolt, but I found that the package is a lot cheaper. It's easily dyable. Again, when I did this one, I put some cheesecloth then their same with the forest green. I love how this turned out. It adds a cute texture. The cheesecloth is not stretchy, it's a pretty open weave, you can flex it diagonally, but it's a great wrap. I have different cheesecloth, different Jersey fabric, and then I also have these pieces of other knit fabric that I found at my fabric store that was really soft and pretty, it's got a good stretch to it. Just like the other wraps, it's really effective. When I buy fabric, I look for something that is stretchy, soft, not too busy. This has just a really soft weave to it. It's not a weave, it's a knit, but anyway. I haven't cut a quarter to a third of the yard. When I buy this, it comes on a bolt like this. It comes folded up, and this is how much I buy. Then this length is what comes already on the bolt of them except it's folded in half and then wrapped on a bolt. If you're going to buy fabric, this is how wide I usually get it. If you get it a little wider, it's nicer for taller babies. If you photograph them at two weeks and want to swaddle, this might be a little too short to swaddle a bigger baby with. I have some white jersey, a gray stretch wrap, and that's it for my wraps. I have little diaper covers. This is so cute because a lot of moms don't think to bring diaper covers, and then they're like, "I don't like the diaper look but I don't want them naked." A diaper cover is awesome because it covers up the diaper. You don't have to worry about babies peeing or pooping on your stuff. It's fine if that happens, that's a normal thing. I wash all this stuff all the time because it gets spit up on or pooped on or peed on and it's fine. That's what you have to do. That's why my bean bag is made of vinyl so that it doesn't damage that. But if you're using someone else's couch, keep that in mind, you can always put a garbage bag between the blanket and the couch to help protect it if it's a porous fabric. But anyway, little diaper covers, little hats, these things are cute. Then lastly we have our crates. I have this gray crate, I got my craft store. This one is a good size because it fits a newborn baby, just barely, a baby that's a little bit older might not fit all the way. For that, I've got a basket that has a cool like knit weave to it. It's nice and long so newborn might look really crazy in this because there's so little, but for a bigger baby that's ideal. I have this, I have yet to actually use this. I really love the way it looks. It has this sort of industrial, modeling look to it. I think into putting a white fur fabric in there, and then putting the baby in. For this one, you have to make sure that you wait the bottom, so put in a sand bag or anything, dumbbells, just something in the bottom and then cover it with blankets, that way this doesn't tip over when you've got your baby peeking out of it. For this one, you would want to tuck their legs and then have their head here, maybe resting on their arms on the edge. Get one of these cool copper handles in. Keep in mind this thing, looks really cool, but you have to be careful. You have to keep in mind the safety of the baby. You do not want your props tipping over. Sometimes this rocks a little, this one, and we just have to make sure we always have someone close by, if the baby is really wiggly. Then this last one is just like a regular weaker basket. It's really simple and basic. I did a session where I used a cool gnarly looking wreath with cotton pods in it, and I love the way that looked. Just be creative with what you have. You can make a little bed for the baby. You can photograph them in their crib for more of a lifestyle look. If they can fit in the back of a little tank or truck or a little tiny wagon, you can use props that way and then as far as more lifestyle images go, the best prop really is mom's arms or dad's arms, by a window, or snuggled together on the bed, that kind of thing. Then lastly, on the same vein as the hats. If you have little bows, some moms don't have bows for their brand new baby girl and they want to make sure people know it's a girls, so it helps to have these bows to keep around. You can make little headband ties. Those are really popular right now, and, yeah, that kind of thing. I have a friend who's so near and dear to me and each of her babies when they were brand new, my mom or I made a hat for them, a little ear flap hat. Her first baby had a little owl hat, her second baby had a fox hat, and then her brand new baby girl had a little lamb hat. Incorporating props that they bring is also really awesome too. That pretty much covers props. Let's talk about posing. 4. Swaddling: Let's talk swaddling. When you have a baby in the hospital, they teach you how to swaddle, and typically this method is very effective, but it leaves the baby's legs elongated, and so they tend to look like a really long burritos. For newborn pictures, I prefer when the baby looks more a little nugget, and so I fold the legs up into the swaddle and I wrap the arms inside too, and so this gives you tight compact looking swaddle. The baby's comfortable, it's very effective. So here I've got my friend's baby in my lap. I have this swaddle laid out with equal lengths on either side, and so I put her right in the middle with the top edge right at her neck, and then the bottom edge, you can see I'm holding her feet and her hands in place. If I keep my hands there, she feels like she can keep them there. Basically, I'm holding them in place, and then I take the bottom of the wrap and I bring it up over her body and I hold it there. This is a stretch wrap, so it's very easy to use, and then I take the right side and I bring it up over her shoulder behind her head and then set out there, and then I take the other side to the left side and I want to bring it up over her left shoulder and around her body. See you have to go slow and make sure their hands stand side. It doesn't have to be exactly perfect this way, if any alternate method, but this is just what works for me. I bring it up and down in a diagonal across her body's. I'm getting her feet in there a little bit and then I bring this underneath her body. You might have two hands on her pretty much all the time, so she does not roll-off anywhere, go anywhere, and then I take this the right side, so the shorter side and I bring it down. Practice folding, this is what's going to show. I took that underneath and then I take the last remaining edge, opened it up and wrap it across her body. I've got quite a bit of scrap fabric leftover and I usually just tuck it right underneath them and then you can just lift her whole body and put it right inside what you're using. Keep in mind, I've got my hand under her head at all times. I've always supporting her neck, and then once I get her in, I'm adjusting the blanket and the support material underneath so that her head is not coming in contact with that harsh wooden edge there. She's comfortable, she looks cute, and that's pretty much it. Any variation of this works well and here's what you got. 5. Posing: So for a typical lifestyle newborns session, I like to take a picture. This is the sandwich shot. So the little baby is sandwich between both parents there who hang on eyeing over how sweet she is. You can see that the light is really clean, just pours around them. Here's a pull back so you can see they're just right up against my back door window. It's really clean, really crisp and then this is a shot of just the dad. So we'd like to do photos with just the dad and then somewhat just the mom. So for these you can see he changed his position a little bit. So from holding her in his hands to cradling her in the crook of his arm and him talking to her, playing with her, giving her kisses. It's just sweet images like that and then you can get some of just her by herself in his arms just to show how little she is in comparison to him. So I really love getting a good variety of images. This one, I actually had to stand up or have him kneel down on the ground because he was he's pretty tall and, then big brother came when he give her a kiss. So super cute, I love that candid shot there and then it was moms turns. So here's my friend and she's holding her sweet Baby giving her kisses. I love this one with the light. They just glows around them. So that's would typically lead through, just getting multiple shots with different angles and different moods and then after this is kind of when I would go into more of the post shots. So I just wanted to run through a couple more sessions. You can just see the variety of images that we can get. These ones are on a bed and so it was nice. It was really easy to get comfortable. The one thing I had to look out for was just to make sure, I didn't get any of the miscellaneous things in the room in the background because this is actually her house. So I had less control over what was going to be in the image, but I loved the way these turned out. Then we finished up with a bunch in her nursery. So this is this week, babies bottled up and snuggling with mom. We've got the cute wall design in the background and a little bit of the crib. I love this session and, then this one is a cute session. I just had the mom and dad just chill on the bed and get pictures with their sweet little one. Here's another session on the bed. I think this is a scene you would actually see. They would actually be snuggling on the bed together and so I really feel like this tells a really good story. Then this one, he's laying on the couch with the baby. They're just snuggling. I love that because really, posing a baby on its parents is just, it's super, super effective. They'll look back and remember what it was like to be a brand new parent or a parent for the second or third time, you've known? So you can get a good variety of images. There's that parent sandwich again. So this is just kind of what I typically like to capture in a session. So it posed shots. We've got a couple different scenarios. We've got your basic on the back, which you can do on a big fluffy bed. So it's just like them lying down. Or you can do in a baskets, in an nest, just having your prompts that way and, then while they're on their back, you can get close-ups of their hands, close ups of their feet. That kind of thing and then also swelled up.Then after you do back, you can do more like side poses. So I like to kind of rotate their hip just a little bit and then rest their head on their hands. So then it just gives it like that snoozing look where they're just really snugly and you just have to be aware that when you post their head on their hand, you have to watch and make sure it's not cutting off the circulation. A lot of babies, their hands will start to turn purple if it's not getting enough blood flow. So you just need to be aware that that's something that happens. Their head is they have this part of them and so if it's pinning their arm down, even if they're super asleep, they might not notice. So and just keep an eye out for that kind of thing. Obviously, the baby's health and safety is top priority for newer ensures. Then we've got our belly shots. Belly shots are a little bit trickier because a lot of babies don't like to lay on their belly. I think part of it's due to the fact that they've got a little bit of their chords still on there and so it doesn't feel good to lay on their belly or like they can't pop their head up. So just feels they're just heavy and they can't really handle it. So for belly shots, make sure to support them so they're a little more upright. You can see in this shot, basically we just had him on a big bean bag and we propped his head up so it's a little higher than the rest of his body. Then you can also try and do like sort of a semi side slash belly shot usually you can get away with that. Then if they do feel comfortable laying on their belly, you just make sure they turn their head to one side or the other so that they can breathe. You can see they're sweet face. I like to put their arm up so that it gives them a little bit of support that way and it just looks really natural. That's kind of it for bellies. Make sure to get nice close-up shots. I know I talked about this with the back poses, just close-up shots for the hands and and the feet tiny little things that they want to remember. Along with your typical sleeping pictures. If you've got a baby that's really awake during this session, it's okay to get awake pictures too. Sometimes those can be really, really beautiful also and, I like to get both If I can, but I'm not going to wake up a sleeping baby. Usually the baby just wakes up when we're changing it and then it just looks around for a while and so awake pictures are good too. Then also like if they're yawning, get a picture of those big yawns or if they're crying, sometimes it's nice to get a couple crying ones in there just so you can remember everything as it was. Lastly, I wanted to talk about naked posing. So a lot of times I try do either if they're naked, I make sure to leave a diaper on or a diaper cover. But if they really are just like no diaper, no diaper cover, you got to shoot quickly because, after a while they get really comfortable. Then that's when they start to pee or poop on your stuff and then you have to, if you can't conceal it, usually if they're sitting in a pile of their own pee, don't like that they'll cry. So you've got to wipe them down. You going to change your backdrop and so it becomes a whole thing. So usually you can get them in position with a diaper on and then hurry and take the diaper off, snap a couple of pictures. Put the diaper back on just to protect yourself from accidents that may happen. Then a lot of times with the naked ones, I just crops so that you don't even see their diaper. It's just you just see belly up and that's a good way to get around that. Then another thing that I like to do if they are just fully naked is just to pose them more modestly. So I'm not going to have their legs spread eagle. I'm not going to be shown at all. They're cute, and they are sweet, and innocent. So just something to keep in mind when you are posing, whether it's positioning of the legs or angle of the camera, just other things to keep in mind for that. So just experiment and change the angle. So if you're shooting by a big window, turn the baby so that either you've got light pouring down over their head rather than like up their nose and, just just the flattering angles and mix it up, get really close, get far away. So you can see the scene just experiment, take lots of pictures and then next let's go through editing. 6. Lightroom Edit: I'm going to show you how I edit this picture. This is the end, this is what I started with. You can see I just created a virtual copy, that's what you've got here, but basically nothing has been done to this image, and so we are going to take it from here to here. Right away, I just basically start at the top here with my exposure, I'm going take it up just a bit. I'm going to up the contrast just a little bit to get the life more image. I'm shooting in raw, and so a lot of raw files tend to be a little muddy just because they've got all the grays, and all the different information in there that you can edit, and yeah I like to create the contrast. We've got a lot of dark here in the shadow areas. I'm going to boost up the shadows to still a little bit, and then white, so I'm going to make a little wider, that'll make this wattle and the cotton pop. Then the blacks usually take down but this image is pretty dark, so that doesn't really need much help. I'm going to increase the vibrance and saturation just a little bit. I've just done three, and then scroll down into the Tone Curve section. I'm going to take my darks up and then make my lights a little lighter. Shadows down. It's still just a muddy in here, so I'm going to have exposure and then maybe bring up my shadows even more. I'm really liking where this is going, but this middle area is close to what I want, but the background is really light. I'm wanting the baby to be the focus, so I'm going to darken this. Over here we've got this radial mask. I'm going to choose darken and then I'm going to draw a circle, just clicked in the middle dragged and then I can adjust where this goes, but that pretty much covers the baby. Here you can see this invert mask tool, if you try this and it made the baby darker, you just got to invert your mask. I click ''Invert'', it makes this outside darker, that's where the dark is being applied. I just adjust that, and then from here I can take my exposure down a lot and it's feathered, so it's not like it's perfect. It's not like it's a cut, if you wanted it like that, you could unfeather it and then see you've got that harsh line. With the feather, it is nice because it's almost settle, so with that sometimes I end up making my selection still a little bit bigger, and then I can bring that down a little darker. Now, I might even go a little too dark, that way I can bring up everything together. Now, I'm out of the mask, I clicked this to go out of it, so now, I'm editing the whole picture again and I up my exposure a little bit more. I want the baby's skin tones to be nice right now, she looks a little bit orange, a little yellow. She's was jaundiced for these pictures, so she had bilirubin, I'm not super familiar with it, but she's a little yellow. I'm going to click on this adjustment mask brush, I'm going to change it to tint. You could do anything but right here we're going to focus on the tint so she's a little yellow, so I'm going to take my temperature down, we will do like negative seven and then she's a little greenish and I'm going to make her a little pinker. That's upset. Down seven and then up seven and then I'm going to address the brush and just start painting the areas that are a little bit off. I don't want to go on her cheek because, it's already pink right now. That is a little bit intense, usually I have to mess with it just a little. You do a lot obviously easy, that's why I painted that way, don't worry it looks like that. Just a little bit of the yellowness out of there. Let me just show you what we started with and what we have now it's very subtle, but it's enough to make a difference. While I'm zoomed in, I'm going to just do my spot removal, so this is my little clone brash. I've got this little weird fuzz right by her ears, I just clicked to clone that out, click to clone out her little bits the dry skin, right here. If babies have any scratches, she's got a teen when right here I just drag, I can drag and that will repair that little scratch. She's got a little speck worry here on her nose, I'm just going to click that out also, then I'm going back to do my adjustment, I have this. It's called skin brightener I made it, it's basically the same thing as soften skin but less intense. My settings, it's just negative sixteen on the clarity, it took down a little bit of the sharpness and then added like 0.05 exposures. It's a little bit brighter mostly it just softens. I'm just going to draw around her face just to smooth out her skin. Right now, her hands are blue, so I'm going to do a new adjusted mask. I'm going to temperature and I'm going to make this warmer. I'm just going to fill some warmth into those freezing little fingers, and it's very subtle. I'm going to just do a little bit more and then I'm also going to take the exposure down just a little more. Let's take a look and see how that worked. If you're looking at the hands, that's before and that's after, so just added a little bit so that she wasn't so cold looking. Then right here her face is in the shadow area, unfortunately, my lighting is coming in right here. Because this is in the shadow area, I'm actually going to brighten it up a little bit more. I use my dodge and then I just drag to brighten her face up. I think that looks good. I'm going to scroll down so you can see where we were, and now we're here. Definitely a lot more emphasis on the baby. This picture overall, I think could be a little bit warmer, but not a whole lot. I'm just going to bring in the warmth, just a touch, just added plus 228. I'm really liking how this is going, I feel like she's a little bit crooked and I know that if I try to straighten her out, it'll cut my wreath because of my crops, if I translate inner, it cuts it off on the bottom. I don't want to do that, I want to come up with a good compromise, I'm just going to just ever so slightly take it in. Awesome. I think that's good. Then at this point I can see basically for this wreath, it's a wreath set on top of a square pillow. Then I have these little fabrics that I usually use for swaddling and I just lay them on top of the pillow. I'm seeing a little square corner poking out here and seeing some white in the wreath and it's a little bit distracting. I'm going to use my Clone Tool and close these out. I'm scrolling on my mouse to address the size of my scroll wheel, and cloning it out. That's a dark area. I probably would not need to zoom in just to make sure what I'm cloning doesn't look crazy. It does look a little weird, I usually like to drag and sample a spot that's going to look more normal. But again, it's the dark areas, so most people aren't going to see this. Let's get these spots up here. Again, our clone, I'm going to adjust the size and then draw for this one. Let's grab some of this branch. It's going to be a little tricky. Good enough no one's really looking closely at the wreath so you don't have to be perfect with this. Right in here. Just going to adjust it a little bit, and then I may even come in with my Adjustment Brush to darken these bits so that they're not as distracting. Hopefully that did it for us. Alright, let's see what we did, cool , that took away a lot of that. Then I see this little speck right here. I always like to make sure I don't have any weird little bits of fibers anywhere, cut hairs, that thing. I feel like this is really effective. I'm warming the way it looks. Let's compare it to what I got previously. Very close this one's a little cooler, but overall, it's basically the same image. That's how I would do a typical shot like this. Then, I also like to come down to my Detail slider and then sharpen a little bit. A trick that I like to do a sharpening. You can do a sharpened, you can mask it a little bit. If I show you the mask, I hold down the Alt key. I'm clicking on the mask and I'm adjusting the slider, and then I push the Alt key. It looks crazy. Basically what I'm doing is applying a mask so it only sharpens what is white. Just to start , it starts at zero, it would sharpen the entire image. If you bring this up just to where you get an outline of everything. Not like where the skin is showing, like the wrinkles and stuff, but just where you have a nice little outline, then our mask is 76, only the bits that are white are going to be sharpened, which is the line, so which is what you want sharpened. Then sharpening you can take up little bit. This image is showing me the gauze which the cheese cloth which doesn't really, I can't tell if that's what I need. I will just like to zoom into the face where I know that they'll be lines and then check my sharpening. If I go too much, you can start to see its crunchy. It might not be easy to see for you in this video, but if you do it on your own, you can see it gets crunchy. You don't want it to be too crunchy, you just want it to be a little bit over sharpening. I've got my masks that to 76, sharpening set to 44 and it's just enough to make my image nice and clear. Actually, I can show you if I'm zoomed in. That is like super crunchy around these edges, overly sharpened, you don't want to do that. Whereas this is a little bit soft and blurry so somewhere in the middle is a good compromise. That is how I would sharpen. Then, if I shot with a really high ISO, This one I used a 100, I don't need to do any like noise reduction. But if you did have to shoot with a really high ISO 800 or 1600, you can come down and do your noise reduction. This is cool because it really just smooths out the image and makes it just like really soft. But noise is like popular noun so a lot of people don't end up doing much with the noise reduction anyway, but sometimes I do if it's distracting. You've got your vignette down here. This image, I mean, a vignette looks kind of nice for here. We can totally out a little bit and then I also haven't really showed this before, but my export, so right-click export, and it opens up this window. Typically what I like to do is, for this one, it's for a newborn class. I put in the sub-folder as newborn class and then I usually rename the pictures. But my file settings, if I'm posting a photo on Instagram or Facebook, I like to change my file settings so that they're smaller and compressed. I felt like I couldn't find what to do for this. I looked on the internet and couldn't really find any suggestions. I just want to show you what I do now. For my file settings, I limit my file size to 1,800K, which is 1.8 megabytes. Which is actually the largest file size that you can upload onto Skill share. I do that so I don't have to go back in and resize my photos for Skill share, there is that. Then the image sizing I always check resize to fit the long edge. I put the long edge at 2500 pixels. That means like if it's a landscape photo, this is 2500 pixels. If it's a portrait, it's this way is 2500 pixels. I always know that my photos are going to be the same size. Then I put the resolution at 240. I just feel like for whatever reason that is better than 300 for using on the computer. These are just my typical settings. What I would do if I liked the settings, I can save them in a preset. I don't do this very often because I just manually change it every time, but I could, I've got my skill share cover images you there because it has to be a certain dimension. But anyway, you can save it then I usually output sharpening, I sharpen for screen and then I just use the standard amount of sharpening. That's just kind of what I always apply in all my photos and then I don't watermark. I just can either show in the Finder or usually I just do nothing. Export it, already exists, I have to rename it something else, but anyway, I'll export it and then I've got it in my file and navigate that, put it in the email, send it to myself and post on Instagram. It's annoying, but it's what I do, that's my export process. I don't know, maybe that helped you with kind of file sizing and things like that. That's how I would edit this little picture right here. 7. Final Thoughts: Also, that's it. I hope that you enjoyed this class. Thank you so much for taking the time to watch it. I know that you have a lot of important things to do and the fact that you spent your important time watching me, means a whole lot to me, so that's really cool. If you want to be notified next time I post another class, don't forget to hit that little blue follow button. You'll get an email that's like, hey, want to take some pictures? Don't forget to post your project in the project section, I love seeing what you make. If you post your pictures on Instagram, tag me, please tag me so I can come see. My handle is [inaudible]. Thanks for watching, I'll see you next time.