Before and After

Although newborn photography requires quite a bit of patience, skill, and a hefty bag of tricks, some of those great shots also require some good Photo Shop skills.

Although I don't know the exact steps I took for each of these shots, I figured I would share a few before (Straight out of the camera) shots and the after (once I have done some post processing in photo shop). I use a combination of Adobe Lightroom 3, PSCS5, and Elements 9.

Before:

 After:

With this shot I increased the blacks, adjusted the exposure and brightness, added a little softening, and created the second photo....still one of my favorite "baby and parent" on black background...almost like a floating effect.

Before:

After:

This shot was rotated, the blacks brought up,  softening, brightness adjustment, and then color selection to make her name POP.

This was probably one of the ones that the before and after are a DRASTIC difference. This is actually me. I set my husband up for this shot and made him push the shutter button. Of course we are all VERY critical of ourselves, but I thought the before picture was AWFUL, and had no clue how I was going to make a respectable picture out of it. Well, I cropped, slightly rotated, softened my skin and erased blemishes, and turned it to B&W. It went from an unusable picture, to one that actually hangs in my home now!

Here are a few more before and after shots with other shoots:

Before:

After:

Lighting and color wise, this photo was pretty spot on, however, I needed to crop it to get all the random studio stuff out, and then just popped it with a little color boost.

Before:

After:

This is now a highly demanded shot with my maternity clients. It was my first go at it, and surprisingly came out beautiful! Yes, that is HER U/S picture of her daughter. I took a photo of the U/S and superimposed the photo onto her belly in photo shop. Then, obviously, I turned the whole thing black and white. I think it looks better in B&W then leaving the mom in color and the U/S in B&W. I love how it looks like they are looking at each other.

If you know what your strengths are in editing, you can see the potential of the shot that is taken. If shot in RAW, you can even fix MOST of the photos you may have under or over exposed.