fairy godmother and photoshop retouching

fairy godmother
Originally uploaded by kenibatz

Photoshop is like a magic wand for digital photographers who need "a thing-a-ma-bob to do the job" of improving or rescuing an image. For beauty retouching portraits, I like my Photoshop magic invisible.

I'm looking for a reasonable critique here: Can you guess where I used Photoshop in this image?


Read more details after the jump.

At the Halloween party hosted by Yvette for her students and friends, she invited our cosplayer friends as special guests to entertain the kids. After all, who knows costumes better than cosplayers?

Nadia, who usually has some of the best anime-inspired costumes I've seen, comes to the party as a fairy godmother. It was quite appropriate as the toddlers in the party were probably not familiar with Japanese cartoon characters yet. These kids like Dora the Explorer and Disney fairy tales, so a character like Cinderella's magical fairy godmother would be more familiar to them.

A fairy godmother needs a magical setting so for this photo, we wanted to capture the scenic river background. Actually, the river isn't visible at all, I think. In retrospect, I can now think of techniques I should have used to get a better image that I was too tired to think of then. (Personal lessons learned: don't overexert yourself with other errands and activities before the shoot. And don't worry too much about the security guards who like shooing photographers away). Since I felt I didn't get the background right, I just cropped the original image to come up with a portrait shot.

Looking at this image, I think the light source (my newly bought Speedlight Pro Kit 6 softbox) was too far away from Nadia which resulted in a generally even although harder light than I would have preferred for a shot like this. Plus I should have placed the light on camera right instead of camera left to avoid the shadows and glare caused by her glasses.

Nonetheless, the real magic to this image came in post-processing.

I'm not fond of resorting to post-processing to rescue an image. For me, post-processing can be tons of fun but very time-consuming. Since I feel there's a lot more I need to learn, I currently prefer to devote time and effort to sharpening my photography skills and getting the image correct "on film". (although that may change when I can finally afford to get a MacBook Pro!)

Fortunately, this image only required very minor retouching and if the viewer doesn't notice what I used Photoshop for, then I've done a decent job. I just used burn, dodge, and healing brush to reduce the natural shiny skin reflections on the face.

So here are my lessons learned from this magical photoshoot: Conserve energy for the shoot. Take time to compose the shot and think about where the light falls. Use Photoshop for retouching if necessary.


"Put 'em together and what do you got? Bippity, Boppity Boo!".

For strobists, the lighting details are specified in my flickr page.