Child/toddler Portraits

Dundhoone

I usually stick to non moving objects, but was asked to take some baby photos , which came out fairly nice.
Can anyone suggest some photoshop treatments that suit this kind of portrait?
Is it all about bright light and softness? I've never softened anything so any help appreciated.

Fajitas!

Quick guide to softening, duplicate your layer, change the blending to soft light or overlay for more contrast, and apply tonnes of gaussian blur!

Then use curve adjustment layers to bring out the eyes.

Lastly, turn the blurred layer into an adjustment layer, paint back out the eyes.

If you really want the eyes to pop, duplicate the original layer again, change it to soft light, apply a high amount of the high pass filter, turn it into an adjustment layer, and leave just the eyes very sharp. Tone down to taste.

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Calina

Al, you might want to put that into the tutorials thread. I'd like to be able to find it again later.

Dundhoone

Thanks for that , tried it on one so far and its looking good.

Solarina

My cousin was just here with her new baby so I got my first chance with one now too!

Postprocessing was interesting because its all completely different to normal!

I found the best way to make them look good was to convert to black&white through Image>Adjustments>ChannelMixer>Monocrome and then fiddling a bit and using the dodge/burn tools to highlight/vignette