5 Portrait HACKS Everyone Wishes They Knew Sooner! 📸

NEW FOR 2021! Learn my top 5 PHOTOSHOP HACKS that I use to retouch my portraits like a pro!

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Model: Julianna

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[lescobrandon]

I thought I knew everything about portrait work but you really added enough to make this a great video.
Subscribed... And Juliana has a great pair of eyes.

[simmo]

Tip 6: ask sitter to look at a point behind you. Tip 7: ask sitter to think of someone that they love.

[nickbrown]

That was 5 minutes well spent, a few tips from someone who is willing to share his knowledge, no annoying music or intros, keep up the good work.

[wilsonstevens]

I am an Industrial photographer, and the most important technique I use is an on-camera flash set for about 1 f-stop less than the available light to highlight the subject eyes and put a white highlight in them. It makes a world of difference when the editor chooses photos for publication. The ones with the flash almost always get chosen over ones without the flash.

[ayuchanayuko]

My personal tip as a commercial printer, as opposed to your first tip:

ALWAYS have headroom on all sides. You need them for both cropping to your required aspect ratio and for filling your bleeds. This works for personal 4R prints up to professional publications like magazines with sizes/ratios ranging from 8x10, 8.5x11, to A4s and 9x12s. Bleeds is where you lay out your photo in a full-page with the intentions that your sides will be cut intentionally but is there since printing and cutting is never perfect. You allow the printer up to 3mm usually to have this margin of error for the trim. So if you don't have this, the printer will either just print a shade of rich black, white, a mirrored version for you edges, or zoom in your photo even more so we can fill your bleed gaps. Think of yourself as a videographer -- Cinema cameras always have these rectangular crop guides with margins that still capture footage outside these guides knowing they will intentionally be crop out or be used by editors for leeway in editing.

Tip2:
Most commercial presses use FOGRA39 as a baseline for CMYK color profiles. To predict and more or less control the final outcome of your print, always put down the brightness of your monitor to match a white piece of paper at the base of your monitor. Then use Photoshop's softproof mode in FOGRA39 with black ink and paper simulation. Depending on your printer, they may or may not use Black Point Compensation -- in our case as a printer, we don't turn it on so we can maintain the vibrance of your colors. Turning it on preserves the details in your deep blacks at the expense of washing out your colors (which is print's way of increasing brightness).

You can work while in this mode to create a "print" version of your work to recover unprintable colors or flattened details. As a person inside whose job used to be to match our clients' monitors who know squat about optimizing and designing for print, I notice that with people with normal monitors, I at least have to add Brightness+20 to 25; For bright monitors, I at least have to add Brightness+40 to 50. I might then remap certain unprintable colors that become "flat" like reflex blue to closer to cyan-ish (C100M60) and fruit orange to closer to vermillion (M40Y100).

If you have your printer's go ahead, you can also convert your work to CMYK using Photoshop's Convert To Profile command and using FOGRA39 as your target CMYK profile. You may also use whatever profile your printer uses or if they provide you with one. If working with uncoated papers, FOGRA29 is a good reference point. You can play around with Black Point Compensation and a host of rendering techniques to preserve your RGB work. Usually its Relative Colorimetric, but my favorite is Perceptual for photos. It is less accurate color-wise, but it preserves the impact of a photo and usually a good perception of your photo in print.

Be advised though that printers still have color delta margins and will not be always the same. Mass-produced publications also will have prints that range from dark to washed out as the print machine stabilized per signature/face.

Tip3:
If you are printing black and white, do the same above to convert to FOGRA39 or your target profile but make sure your CMY values are not equal or too close to each other. Having them perfectly equal or close will yield prints or spreads that don't have the same shade of rich gray. Control this by using Selective Color > Blacks and make sure you have a healthy margin where each CMY ink is more or less 10% ahead of each other at around the 50% grays. I usually go for cool grays as a bluish gray (Cyan+Magenta) tends to look neutral in human perception, so I will go for something like Cyan 60, Magenta 50, Yellow 40 as a reference point for midtone grays. If you want a warmer print with a tendency to go yellowish/red, then you make Magenta 60 Yellow 50, Cyan 40.

Tip4:
A competent printer will always respects your RGB profile so always attach your color profile. Some disregard your CMYK profile but thats fine as most people really don't know how to use CMYK and you will pass on your file in a press-ready CMYK PDF anyway if you do know what you're doing.

Tip5:
Finally, even after all you could do, always remember its not about color accuracy -- its about how the viewer sees it. The viewer doesn't know that the sky was originally this shade of teal but if it looks great and the impact is preserved, leave it at that. Printing is an art in and of itself and we should learn to let go. Our prints look different in every situation ranging from outdoor lights to indoor 6500K lights to professional 5000K lights to LED lights to flickering bulbs. Heck, even 50 and 60Hz lights will make colors and print look differently. Knowing that, you learn to just admire the beauty.

[mrm]

1/ fill the frame (remove the headroom)
2/ Catchlights (get a good reflection from the eyes)
3/ Eye placement (shy people look away showing less iris) instruct them to look in same direction of their nose
4/ Lighting (golden hour nice soft light / midday harsh light)
5/ Draw a great expression - get them to perform a pose etc link in the flash card

[hollykbae]

Tell the subject to do a powerful pose with their feet, even if you can’t see their feet in the photo when you are just starting the session with them. You may have to demonstrate. I find telling girls to give a sassy pose (whatever their interpretation of that is) empowers them to feel confident in the photos. Even if you don’t use these photos in final product — it’s about getting them confident and getting expressions

[barkyvonschnauzer]

Love the way how he rocks backwards & forwards like a giddy little school boy talking to the rest of the class 😘

[photographynerd]

Hey Miguel. I found tips 2 and 3 about the eyes extremely helpful. I followed so many Utubers over the years, but no one has mentioned and explained those ideas so simple as you have. Thanks, Bro, I will definitely use them. Bookmarking this vid too.

[hersh]

As a guy who is trying to learn Portraits, these were helpful tips! The eyes tip was very helpful

[MiscellaneousMcC]

Tip #1 Shoot wide and crop. This is so underrated and something I’ve started doing regularly. The extra space allows you to play with the print aspect ratios in post and gives bleed room for printing. Anything over 24MP will have plenty of resolution to leave 10% extra room around the subject, and it will be needed when the client is deciding what sizes they want to print, as the ratios change for different sizes.

[ianofAustin]

The direction of the subjects eyes is paramount, thanks for that tip!!

[catchlite]

Some awesome advice I haven’t heard anybody else about! Thanks Miguel. And yes, put her in the videos more.. she hasn’t said a word.

[Evaquiel]

About the headroom tip, it only applies if you're shooting beauty/fashion/standard portraits. But in a more author/artistic portrait there're infinite bizarre ways of composing your shot to give a certain feel. Exemple: a lot of head room may leave your subject like he's feeling alone or distant (used a lot in drama films).

[ShivaSharifi]

I love your playing a character tip for portraits, one of the most useful things I have heard in a long time. Thanks so much for sharing your ideas with us

[scottsater]

Really helpful video, Miguel! Helpful tips for portraits, and I loved the character playing idea. Yes to Juliana in more shoots! I'm finding joy in creating alternate head angles, and eyes looking at me without always having the head "aimed" at me. Basic stuff, I know, but fun experimenting to create unique "moods!" Thanks so much!

[rickymcc]

Hi Miguel
Thanks for sharing these good easy to recall tips. Eye placement wasn't something I always did (usually I just directed where to look, often to camera) and never considered relative iris to white size. Love your idea for playing a role or character - I still find getting novice subjects to give me the expression I want the hardest part of portraiture, often I just get them laughing when I encourage them to adopt a particular look and time isn't always on your side to go through the whole ...."I want you to imagine etc".

[modern.performer]

I was always applying tip 1 but for certain of my younger models including my wife, it is important that I let a decent gap above their heads on every shot, bc of instagram format (4:5) and feed aesthetics purposes. (Basically if you look at the feed they want every pic to be centered, and the head not being cropped. I had alot of difficulties doing it on purpose at the beginning and I was never letting enough space above the models 😂.

[oneallallone]

On the last note its very true. This past Sat I worked with a model that knew her poses. It was like magic. Its important for models to learn it.

[rickymcc]

Hi Miguel
Good tips and thanks for sharing. One thought I had about tip 1 was 'framing to suit' your end need. I first encountered a version of your tip 1 as 'fill the frame' but sometimes it can get a little tight to one edge. I now like to shoot hi-res then crop to suit. I particularly like the concepts of having 'negative space', some space for the subjects direction of look to take you into i.e. looking into and not out of frame and space for environmental elements - often out of focus and/or dark so as not to compete tt strongly with eyes/face.

Good vid and I appreciate you can't do a short vid with 99 different insights etc etc so 5 tips is a lot more accessible than a full on masterclass.