Ask several accomplished portrait photographers to name the key component of an image, and you’ll likely receive the same response: “It’s the eyes.” Making the most of these beacons of personality often requires a bit of straightforward post processing, and that’s what you’ll learn how to do today.

The following tutorial comes to us from the Lou Imag’in YouTube channel and demonstrates a simple Photoshop technique for getting the job done to perfection—even if you’re inexperienced at portraiture or editing images in Photoshop. Maybe you’re photographing a models indoors, making environmental portraits with available light, or shooting causal images of family or friends. Whatever the task, this easy approach will boost the quality of your results.

The instructor named Lou is a professional photo retoucher and experienced travel photographer who also shoots the occasional people picture. In barely three minutes she walks you through a simple Photoshop technique for deepening the gaze and making a model’s eyes POP—all in a very natural looking way.

In fact, Lou’s method is so simple that only one adjustment layer is required to accomplish this essential task. The process begins by zooming in on the image and navigating to Photoshop’s Curves panel. Then you find the brightest area of the eyes (other than a reflection) and drag that spot on the Curve upwards.

Next Lou locates the darkest portion of the eyes and does the opposite; namely dragging that point down. Now it’s time for a Mask, and you’ll why and how to make it invisible. Lou then chooses a Brush with 20% Opacity and paints inside the eye—taking care to avoid any lashes or skin surrounding the eye.

This enables you to boost contrast, color, sharpness, and other parameters of the eye—all without affecting other portions of the shot. Lou advocates taking a very subtle approach, to maintain a realistic look, so you may have to zoom in on the before/after images to appreciate the effectiveness of the final result.

Remember, with portraiture “the eyes have it,” and despite the subtlety of this approach it can make a big difference in the impact of your portrait photos. After watching this lesson head over to Lou’s instructional YouTube channel where there’s much more to learn.

And on a related note, be sure to check out another tutorial we posted, explaining how to use Photoshop’s High Pass Sharpen and White Balance tools to edit portrait photos for a flattering effect.

There are a variety of reasons that unnatural color casts may appear in in your outdoor photographs, and when they do they can really spoil a shot. Fortunately, whether you’re dealing with unwanted blue, green or magenta tones, there’s a straightforward way to eliminate them in in Lightroom.

Instructor Neil Borg is an accomplished pro specializing in travel and landscape photography, so he’s experienced this problem more than one or twice. He introduces today’s episode like this: “I’ll guide your through the fastest and easiest way to banish color casts from your precious shots. I’ve got you covered.”

Borg notes that color casts are quite common—especially when experimenting with new techniques, using ND filters, or shooting long-exposure imagery. And if you choose the wrong White Balance Setting in your camera, color shifts can easily occur.

The demonstration photo was captured from the shore of a lake in New Zealand. As you can see, the image is sharp and nicely composed, and there’s no problem with the exposure. Unfortunately, as Borg notes, “there are magenta hues that are sort of taking over the whole scene.”

Borg begins the rehabilitation process in Lightroom’ Calibration panel. As he explains, “this panel allows us to, first and foremost, shift the tint from either towards the green or towards the magenta. It also allows us to calibrate the primary colors of red, green and blue.” He then demonstrates how to make these preliminary adjustments.

Now that the image appears much more realistic, the next step is correcting White Balance. He selects a pure white area in a cloud and uses this as his point of reference. Then by clicking on this spot, the Color Balance immediately shifts toward the blue. Borg also has a quick method for refining the affect.

Now we’re getting really close, and Borg makes a few basic adjustments “just like I would when editing any other photo.” He straightens the shot, makes a Profile correction, adds a subtle vignette, and makes enhancements to exposure and other common variables.

The transformation concludes by employing masks to make a few selective adjustments to specific portions of the scene. Now he has a final result for which he can be justifiably proud. Borg’s popular YouTube channel has other simple lesson like this one, appropriate for photographers of all skill levels. So be sure to pay a visit and explore what’s available.

And be sure to check out the tutorial we posted with another expert, explaining how to speed up your Lightroom workflow by copying edits from one image to others with a similar look.

Have you ever returned from a day in the field, reviewed your photos on the computer, and asked yourself, “What was I thinking in shooting this image?” Like often happens you may have captured a scene that looked awesome through the viewfinder, but your images are boring at best.

In today’s Lightroom tutorial from the PHLOG Photography YouTube channel you learn how Lightroom’s Crop tool can transform those uninspiring photos into money shots. Some of  these problems are due to poor composition, or maybe you you didn’t use a long enough focal length to capture the essence of what would have been a dynamic shot. In either case this 20-minute lesson is just what you need.

Instructor Christian Mohrle is a professional German landscape photographer and a very adept instructor. His goal for this episode is to demonstrate “why Lightroom’s Crop to is a “lifesaver” for rehabilitating uninteresting photos.” We suggest using the link beneath the video to download his Raw file so you can make the adjustments yourself as they’re explained.

The image at hand was shot at a focal length of 100mm and Mohrle explains the weakness of his photo like this: “While the golden peaks are nicely centered, I should have gotten much closer instead of shooting a wider shot.” His goal for this fix is to make the sun-bathed peaks much more prominent while keeping them in the center of the frame.

This task requires cropping three sides of the image: a bit from the sky, slightly more on the right, and a larger chunk on the left. He also removes a sliver from the bottom. This technique illustrates the common mistake of only cropping from one edge of the frame. Now his key subject nicely fills the frame.

You’ll also learn how to add one of several grid overlays that he says, “are super helpful for different types of images.” After the cropping is complete there’s now a very clear subject in the middle of the image, while all of the surrounding distractions have been removed.

Mohrle is now very pleased with the composition, but being a perfectionist, there still more to complete the transformation. First he makes several global adjustments to the overall image with basic enhancements to color, exposure highlights/shadows, and the like.

Then comes masking for selective enhancements to key areas within the scene. All it takes to complete the job is careful sharpening and targeted color grading. Compare the before/after images and you’ll be impressed.

Then head over to Mohrle’s instructional YouTube channel where you’ll find more effective techniques for editing your landscape photographs.

We also strongly recommend watching a tutorial we posted earlier with a very helpful beginners guide to Lightroom’s versatile masking filters.

Winter is often regarded as the doldrums for nature and wildlife photographers here in Michigan. Despite the unusually warm weather this year, opportunities for outdoor photography have been quite limited, often resulting in gloomy two-hour long outings in the wild yielding little more than a few images of withered brown leaves, and maybe a squirrel or two.