Creating clean, natural-looking portraits that stand out often depends on mastering a few simple but effective techniques.
Coming to you from Gerard Needham, this informative video highlights five techniques that will elevate your portrait editing. The first is ensuring consistent white balance across your images. Needham suggests syncing white balance settings for photos taken in similar lighting conditions, which keeps skin tones uniform and prevents distracting shifts in tone. He explains how tools like auto-white balance can help, but emphasizes the importance of manually fine-tuning in Lightroom for precise results. This step lays the foundation for polished, cohesive edits.
Perfecting skin tones is another key focus. Needham demonstrates how to use Lightroom’s HSL panel to fine-tune hue, saturation, and luminance for natural-looking results. Adjustments with the color picker tool allow for targeted refinements, while the color grading panel helps reduce redness or unwanted tints in the skin. These small tweaks can dramatically improve the realism and appeal of your portraits, ensuring they look professional without over-editing.
Cropping often gets less attention than it should, but can significantly impact composition. Needham explains how to adjust framing to avoid awkward cuts at joints and create balanced, visually pleasing portraits. He also emphasizes the importance of leaving enough headroom and aligning the crop with the subject’s proportions. Thoughtful cropping brings out the best in your images and eliminates distractions. That's just the start, so check out the video above for the full rundown from Needham.
If you would like to continue learning about the art of portraiture, be sure to check out our range of tutorials on the subject in the Fstoppers store.
