For resolution 2560×1707 (wide screens) right-click here and choose “Save As” option.

For resolution 2560×1440 right-click here and choose “Save As” option.

Cheers!

Greg.

Sometimes, after shooting portraits, when I look at the photos, I see that in some of them the persons’ iris is too dark. In that case I want to brighten it (obviously ). To do that, in Lightroom 3 I used to choose the adjustment brush, bump up the brightness slider a little bit, and brush the eyes. This presented a problem because it would brighten up everything I “brushed”, so I had to be very accurate with the brush and the process took quite some time considering I would do it to many photos.

Luckily Lightroom 4 improved the overall processing workflow and now I can do it much faster and more efficiently. So If you have Lightroom 4 and want to brighten up a bit eyes of your models here’s a quick and easy way to do it.

1. Go to develop module in Lightroom and select the adjustment brush:

2. Increase the Shadows slider quite a bit, but make sure that all other sliders are zeroed out.

3. Brush over your model’s eyes quickly, not trying to make the exact selection.

4. Adjust the Shadows slider to taste

What happens is that the Shadows slider brightens (or darkens if you slide it to the left) only the darks, and usually around the area of the eye, the iris is the darkest part. The eyelashes and the pupils are completely black and Shadows slider doesn’t affect them. So if you accidentally select a small portion of the white of the eye, or the skin, they won’t be affected by this adjustment.

Here’s an example of before and after using this technique

Before (click to enlarge)

After (click to enlarge)

I hope you will find it useful, and be sure to let me know how you go in the comments section below!

P.S. For best results I recommend shooting RAW

Click on the photo to enlarge.

Being a photographer-dad, needless to say that already after one week, my hard drive doesn’t have enough space for all the photos I took of her. So I try to force myself to delete some of them. It is really hard, even when as a photographer, I see that the photo isn’t that good… but this is my daughter we are talking about!

Anyway watching her for a while I saw that her face is constantly changing, different moods and expressions passing through like clouds in the sky. Sorting the photographs I chose a few of them to post here.

Hope you enjoyed the photos, and have a nice weekend!

For resolution 2560×1707 (wide screens) right-click here and choose “Save As” option.

For resolution 2560×1440 right-click here and choose “Save As” option.

Cheers!

Greg.