Thought I’d try my hand at editing a macro shot. Wow, that’s some detail.This time around, I decided to turn my focus to a macro shot of a pair of full red lips by William Clark. I knew it was going to be fairly involved, but I didn’t factor into just much effort went into editing a photoshoot of this nature.

I had to firstly, clear up all the flaky, chapped skin on her lips. Followed that up with working on her skin and the fine hairs around her mouth, straightening her teeth, fixing her nose (which was bothering me), and colour grading (I chose to make her lipstick more red and punchy, and desaturated her skin a fair bit to bring in some contrast).

I possibly went a bit overboard.

There was a few sessions where my eyes just burnt – especially after a ton of D&B.

Dodge & Burn mask. Red and yellow indicate dodging, light blue and dark blue are for the burning.

Yet again, I feel that I may have gone a touch overboard with the sharpening – and this time with the finishing grain too. I think I also need to stop trying to be so perfect – I would love to aim to achieve work like Daniel Hager, Julia Kuzmenko McKim, and more… the professionals that I admire. I need to realise too that how the photo is shot also affects the final product – you can only change it so far?

Anyhow, as this is a before/after post, and not one for waffling on, I present ye the two images for your consideration.

If you have any tips or suggestions on how I can improve, or just want to say hi, please leave a comment below. I’d really appreciate it.

Hope you have an awesome day!