The Full Guide on How to Take Better Portrait Photos

» Posted by Sinyu on Feb 5, 2010 in Digital Photography | 11 comments

The aperture will control the field of depth and the shutter speed will control the amount of motion that is captured.

Shooting outdoors and in motion, against the sunlight direction, hence the face is not lit properly due to incorrect exposure settings.

When the aperture setting to f-number is 1.0 and speed of the shutter is 1 second, the EV setting is 0.0. Exposure values of different settings are all relative to the EV number. Each EV setting then -1 or +1 is representative of the exposure (light that hits the sensor) being doubled or cut in half. This scenario is not likely and you will probably not find yourself having to set absolute EV values. As a matter of fact on most cameras you can not set the EV level. When you will set EVs is when sting the exposure compensation. This means you can set the exposure compensation to higher or lower than the automatic detection. This allows you to fix the problems relating to under and overexposure.

Usually the exposure compensation value is +/-5EV. And when setting the exposure compensation you will add or take away from that setting. A simple example of this would be a setting of +2EV that will make a picture brighter or overexposed while a setting of -2EV will create a photo that is dark or underexposed. On a sunny day therefore you could change the setting to a -0.5 or -1 and that will allow your colors to be more vibrant.

You can also set the EV with auto bracketing that will allow the camera to change the exposure with each photo of a series. You can also set the EV between photos.

Step 3: Fixing and Adding the Final Touches with Photoshop

Do you want to add some extra touches to make your photo stand out and look professional? Are you an amateur that wants to look like a pro? Are you tired of all of your photos coming out as if the children were the ones taking them? Then you need to use Adobe Photoshop.

You are not alone because many professionals now use Photoshop to touch up their photos too. Just remember not everyone takes a professional looking photo every time some of the best photographers have had to perform a touch up once in a while. Poor exposure, red eye and fingers over the lens are great examples of some of the errors that everyone makes; even the most trained of the professional photographer has needed some help with editing.

Professionals have easily found the way to fix these problems using Adobe Photoshop. Some professionals even edit the photos of models using Adobe Photoshop. Most photos you see in advertisements are in some way enhanced or cleaned up by the use of Adobe Photoshop. They give clearer skin and no flaws; you can reduce the look of slight wrinkles to make the skin of the face look completely flawless. If a picture is taken and later it is discovered that a bad acne problem just looses the luster of the picture, this can be easily edited out there are ways to get rid of the redness and the actual pimple itself with the easy click of the mouse. Using Adobe Photoshop can even allow you to edit away extra pounds or even enhance an area that could use a little extra.

Here are some things you can do to make your photos look a pro took them:

You can easily get rid of red eye. Sometimes red eye just happens, even with the use of a SLR digital camera that has red eye reduction built in. With Adobe Photoshop you can remove red eye from any subject, even the family pet so there are no more worries of seeing your family and pets come out looking like some type of possessed demon, we all have those old family photos where we look like extras in the latest horror movies and the use of the red eye remover will take this problem away permanently.

Make your colors stand out. Adobe Photoshop can not only clean up images, it can enhance the appearance of colors. The color enhancement tools can allow you to fix contrast and brightness and turn an underexposed photo into a work of art. This tool is used to manually adjust colors to give your image the look of perfection.

Not only can you fix colors, you can get rid of any unwanted image in the photo that you did not notice while you were taking it. If you see a trash barrel in the background, you can easily remove that trash can with Adobe Photoshop. Even if there are people in the photo that you do not want there, you can easily remove them with this software.

These ideas are just a couple of the many features you will find in the Adobe Photoshop software. Even an amateur will look like a professional when using this tool. Adobe Photoshop is a great addition for anyone that wants to have photos that look professionally done.

You can receive this free report so you can discover the unique video series giving complete step-by-step instructions. This will allow you to become familiar with Adobe Photoshop and have you running it like a pro in no time.

Step 4: Portrait Printing – Understand what PPI and DPI is

Most people know what DPI is, but it is usually used wrong in context to explain the number of pixels in a particular photo, the dots per inch in a printed photo or the number of dots per inch that a printer can make. We will explain the PPI and DPI and what the difference is.

The PPI is pixels per inch. That means in each photo, the number of pixels that are in each inch of the particular photo. This is also known as the megapixels in a cameras sensor, you can multiply this by the size of the photo to know the PPI it may sound difficult at first but just follow the following step-by-step. If the PPI is not your main concern this is not an area you need to focus on but if it is important go ahead and use the following steps.

All you need to do is multiple the width of the photo by the length of the photo to come up with the square inch area of a particular photo. Now all you need to do is divide the number of square inches by the megapixel amount of the camera, the total will be the pixels per square inch. The following graph shows the PPI for different sizes of a 5 megapixel camera.

• Page 4*6 – 456 PPI

• Page 5*7 – 377 PPI

• Page 8*10 – 250 PPI

• Page 11X14 – 180 PPI

• Page 16*20 – 125 PPI

• Page 20*30 – 91 PPI

The DPI means Dots per inch. The physical characteristics of the printer are described by DPI. This tells you how many dots are printed by a particular printer. Each dot is printed onto the paper at a certain size and the DPI tells you how many dots are used on any particular photo. A cheaper printer will have a lower DPI than a higher quality printer. The DPI is easily explained as the number of dots that are in a square inch of printed paper. If a printer tells you the DPI is 120 that mean that there are 1200 dots in every square inch of print. When you buy a printer you will want one that can print the same number of DPI as there are PPI in a photo. If your DPI is lower than that of the PPI that will result in a photo of less quality and if the numbers are reversed, there will have to is more DPI used to take up the space of the PPI. The DPI has actually nothing to do with the size of the paper; it is a fixed number that any particular printer is capable of.

Hope this will help you to shoot, retouch and print your Portraits.Remember that it’s a hard task, not everyone is capabale of and it takes a lot of practice until you achieve good results.

Please also see our HDR Photoshop Actions toolkit for fixing your colors and exposure instantly.

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