Photoshop Friday : Newborn Editing

March 4th, 2010 by ariana

A lot of people asked me about my newborn post processing, and what I “do to my photos” in photoshop. For many images, my goal is as little as possible other than white balance! That works much of the time, but newborns usually have some magenta and blotchiness that needs some further tweaking in PS.

So we will cover how to go from blue blotchy baby:

to gorgeous warm creamy skin!

This video is in two parts because it’s a bit long.. the first part covers how I use a digital grey kard while I’m shooting , how I use it to adjust white balance in LR (or ACR it would be the same) and then how I use an inverted highlights selection to brighten everything but the highlights:

The second part covers using the spot healing and patch tools to get rid of blotches and blemishes and also how to use a levels adjustment layer mask to get rid of any remaining dark magenta areas:

Let me know if you have any questions!

PS, I did this on a different monitor that hasn’t been calibrated for quite some time, so my skin tones may be look a tad off, but the principles are the same :)

Filed under: Photography Links, photoshop, Photoshop Tutorials by ariana
32 Comments »

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32 Responses to “Photoshop Friday : Newborn Editing”

Catharine, on March 4th, 2010 at 2:46 pm Said:

wow, fantastic. Love to see the workflow!
Lindsay, on March 4th, 2010 at 4:19 pm Said:

Thanks for posting this! I never realized that you could do a curves adjustment on only the inverse of the highlights and never understood how you use adding color to correct color. I can’t wait to try this out!
Amanda, on March 4th, 2010 at 4:27 pm Said:

Awesome tutorial!! Thank you so much for taking the time to do this for us. Really, really helpful!!
Ava, on March 4th, 2010 at 8:36 pm Said:

I love Photoshop Fridays :)
ariana, on March 4th, 2010 at 8:40 pm Said:

I decided to post it today instead of Friday but I guess my attempt to change the post title didn’t work.. oh well, I’m sure you all will appreciate the weekend coming a day early :)
Kristen, on March 4th, 2010 at 10:25 pm Said:

Thanks Ariana!!
Emily, on March 5th, 2010 at 3:38 pm Said:

You are so wonderful to share this with us. I have learned so much from you! And I think I am getting mojo from your camera!
Michelle Dry, on March 5th, 2010 at 8:23 pm Said:

I couldn’t understand what you said was to select highlight in CS3. It sounded like Ctrl+Alt+ tilda ? If that is what you said, what is tilda?
ariana, on March 5th, 2010 at 8:51 pm Said:

Michelle, it’s ctl+alt+ ~
Michelle Dry, on March 5th, 2010 at 10:09 pm Said:

Oh, Thanks!
Nallely, on March 5th, 2010 at 10:57 pm Said:

Hi Ariana, I just found your website today. I think you are awesome. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Will be back to visit!
Sarah, on March 5th, 2010 at 11:17 pm Said:

I loved your recent newborn photo posts. So precious! It’s easy to forget how delicate they are in the beginning (I say this as Finn runs and jumps around in front of me like a little wildman). My sister is pregnant with twins, and I can’t wait to photograph them in a few months. But although I just got a new lens for my birthday, I have yet to get any good editing software. Perhaps I should have put that on my wishlist instead…
Lisa, on March 8th, 2010 at 4:08 am Said:

Thanks for the awesome tutorial!
Portrait Retouching : Making Mom Look Good | Becoming Mom – Mommy Blog and Photography, on March 10th, 2010 at 5:16 pm Said:

[...] tool to get rid of that deep furrow above my brow – (I think botox may be in my future!) I went over that technique in the second part of my newborn processing tutorial so I’m not going to repeat myself, but if you aren’t familiar with these tools, [...]
Natasha, on April 8th, 2010 at 6:05 pm Said:

Hi there

I just watched your video and I am trying to figure out the quick keys for selecting highlights and inverse on a mac cs3?!? Can you help!?!? Thanks for the great video!
Tammy, on April 23rd, 2010 at 9:35 pm Said:

Thanks for you video.
Andrea, on June 9th, 2010 at 6:12 pm Said:

Your tips are great! Is there anyway to fix the skin tones in just lightroom? I have tried the lightroom trial and LOVE it, but can not afford both lightroom and photoshop, so I’m trying to do as much as possible in lightroom alone. Can it be done?
Alicia, on June 22nd, 2010 at 4:58 am Said:

Ari! I FINALLY got around to watching this as I just downloaded the Lightroom trial (for the next 8 days – eek)! Your tuts are the best by far – thank you SO much! You rock!!!
Kelsey, on July 28th, 2010 at 3:00 pm Said:

K so this will probably sound really stupid but this will be my first newborn shoot on saturday, when taking a picture with the digital grey card do you need to put a doll in it? haha I am a complete beginner so I just wanted to make sure :]
ariana, on July 28th, 2010 at 3:10 pm Said:

Kelsey – no, it TOTALLY doesn’t matter what is in the picture with the gray card! The reason I use the doll is so that I have something to meter off of, which is a whole separate issue :)

I like to use the doll to position, check that I like the lighting, meter off of the doll’s “skin” all before I lay the baby down so I don’t waste any shots once baby is in place!
ashley h, on August 10th, 2010 at 10:15 pm Said:

HI…GOOD stuff!!

Do you know if there’s a shortcut in Elements 8.0 to select highlights like you did with CS3 (the CTRL/Shift/~)? I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find it…
Sarah, on December 8th, 2010 at 4:26 am Said:

Hi! So glad I found your blog! GREAT tutorials :) When I follow your steps to lighten midtones/shadows for some reason it’s applying the levels adjustment to the whole photo and not just the selection. Do you think I’m missing something obvious? Or is it maybe just a setting on my CS3? Thanks so much!
ariana, on December 8th, 2010 at 3:23 pm Said:

Hi Sarah, the CS3 command to select the hightlights is different, I believe it’s Cntl+alt+~ but for you or anyone else that is having a hard time getting this selection to work, you can always go under the select menu and choose “color range” and from there choose “highlights” from the drop down! Then, from the select menu choose select inverse, and then do your curves adjustment!
Amber, on March 8th, 2011 at 4:19 am Said:

Thank you for this. It helped me a lot!
Maru, on June 9th, 2011 at 5:06 am Said:

Great tutorial! Can’t wait to try it. My question is that I only have photoshop. Can I adjust the white balance with a picture using the graycard like you did in Photoshop instead of LR?
Julia, on June 22nd, 2011 at 1:59 pm Said:

I just found you! Awesome, thank you so much! I’m really struggling though highlighting….I have CS5 and I’m on a Mac. Do you know the shortcut? I can’t even find it w/out the shortcut. Thanks!
Gina, on October 12th, 2011 at 6:04 pm Said:

This is so helpful!!Thank you for taking the time to do this!
chantelle prejean, on December 9th, 2011 at 6:17 pm Said:

hey i want to know what ps version you are using here and how to get those specific windows up i recently started using cs5 and have no idea what im doing

I love the recovery slider and wb stuff
and all the tools under the basic window
Jenn, on January 15th, 2012 at 4:35 pm Said:

Love the tutorial! I am SO glad I found this!!! Love the selection tip on the 1st video!! Thank you!!!!!
Tina Hursh, on May 7th, 2012 at 2:46 am Said:

Thank you, thank you, so much! Your instruction was so clear and easy to understand. I appreciate your taking time to make this for us. :)
Tracey, on June 15th, 2012 at 6:39 am Said:

Hi there,

So love your website and fantastic tools – thank you for sharing!!

Won’t you send me a price for the wall display guide?

Many thanks, Tracey.
ariana, on June 15th, 2012 at 6:43 am Said:

Hi Tracey – they are all available here! http://www.arianafalerni.com/design/wall-display-guides/order-now-for-photoshop/