Included in the session fee is an online gallery of edited images from your session for viewing and sharing with whomever you give the password and link to. So what does edited mean?

Instead of displaying the hundred or so images taken during a session, I go through and sort out the best. I look at composition, expression, and technical quality. After picking out the top images, I go through and edit them using, most often, Lightroom and/or Photoshop.

Here is an example of a basic, straight edit of my cutie niece Abby:

Her picture didn’t need much, since there is very little background and she already has pretty baby skin.

Here is what I did:

• Cleaned up crumbs around her mouth and crusties around her nose (hard to see in the images above)
• Lightened shadows
• Brightened skin
• Brightened, sharpened, and increased contrast slightly in eyes
• Brushed out circles under eyes
• Darkened background a bit

This brings the picture to the starting point for any other editing I may want to do.

From here things like converting to black and white, tinting, glow, etc. happen. Decisions regarding additional creative editing usually depend on location, time of day, type of session, etc. In other words, the look and feel of the overall session help me to decide how the final images should look.

Want to see more posts like this? Let me know!