Up-Close Portrait Photography: Start to Finish

How do you create authentic, sincere portraits that capture the essence of people? A lot of it comes down to post-production. Using Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, Chris Orwig walks us through three start-to-finish, up-close portrait projects: a portrait of a legend, a portrait of an artist, and a portrait of a celebrity. He explains the common foundation for the shots—a natural style, setting, and lighting—and explains how to zero in on the best image from a collection. He shows how to enhance each portrait with Lightroom and Photoshop, combining black-and-white adjustments with creative cropping, retouching, and color and tone enhancements. He recaps the editing process for each portrait, and closes with some ideas to integrate in your own workflow.

Learning objectives
Selecting keepers
Creating collections
Creating a strong black-and-white look
Cropping portraits
Retouching skin and other features
Fine-tuning portraits