Photo: George Milton
Taking appealing pictures for your beauty blog is quite a hard task on its own. Preparing props, finding the best angles, and illuminating the scene takes a lot of time, patience, and practice. Another thing is to edit the shots in the best way possible, in a way that will further emphasize your work, make your blog unforgettable. Photo editing is an art, and every photographer and retoucher will agree with this statement.
However, it is always possible to effortlessly approach this task, even if you don’t have a lot of experience in the beauty retouching field. From online photo editing services, easy-to-use apps, and platforms, to professional programs — here is everything you need to take your beauty selfies to the next level of class.
Why is photo editing important for your blog?
There are several reasons why you may need to retouch your selfies for a beauty blog. One of the first, and the most obvious, is the disadvantageous lighting and color outcome. For example, you don’t have professional studio lights that you can set according to your needs and light up a scene. As a result, the final photo may turn out to be too dark (or vice versa too bright). Such inconvenience may be solved with a few clicks in a photo editing program or with the help of an app.
Another common problem well-known to every photographer is color balance. Depending on the camera you are using, the set-up of the white balance, and even the situation with the light in the room, selfies may not always capture the true hues. That’s when color correction and color grading comes to the rescue. The secret to a good-looking shot is to adjust the RGB colors, later adding extra colors to enhance your photo.
Removing small imperfections like peach fuzz, messy hair strands, and unwanted objects from the background may be the simplest way to improve your selfies. But adding original effects, and even watermarks with your personal hashtag or your website's domain name can help your selfies stand out from the crowd. The most important thing here is to move slowly and keep your pictures classy.
How to Show Your Personality Through Selfie?
Your selfie is the very first thing everyone sees when visiting your social media profile. Therefore, making your picture eye-catching may help to make your brand more recognizable, attracting more customers and brands to your profile. Here is where you can start with your selfies:
Another simple way to dilute dullness is to add creative collages to your website or profile. You can use
ready-to-use design templates that will help you to come up with a Youtube thumbnail, Facebook cover, how-to recipe layout, and much more. I love compiling my makeup looks in one big collage that features my favorite creations.
- Use Brand's Colors & Fonts:
To make your photos even more recognizable, use your brand's colors and fonts. You can buy personalized fonts and color themes on Etsy, or via a designer-centered font website
FontSpace. They have thousands of beautiful fonts for personal and commercial usage. Another useful online tool that will help you to combine colors is
Color-Hex. Its library contains more than 80k color palettes with HEX codes, which you can use for free.
- Find your personal style:
Before playing with photo filters and frames, you’ll need to define a style that matches your personality and the way you want to portray yourself on your social profiles. It may be a special angle, minimalist approach to the composition, or even such a simple thing as monochrome photography.
- Personalize your Stories:
Pinterest ideas, Facebook, and Instagram stories can also be used to express your own style and the style of your brand.
Create Instagram stories with ease using Fotor. It is an online photo editing suite that will cover almost all of your photo editing needs.
A Step-by-Step Selfie Editing Process for Beauty Blog
We already defined that beauty retouching is an artist’s way to express and interpret one's vision. For this reason, everyone’s retouching process is different, and your way may be completely opposite to mine. In the process of time, you’ll find your own “handwriting” that will determine your style. But, for now, I’m going to show you through my selfie retouching process for my beauty blog.
1. Start with a Simple Clean-up
I like to start my selfie retouching process with the most basic clean-up, where I remove stray hairs, flecks, and other minor imperfections. If there is anything extra in the background, something I don't want to appear on my selfie, I also remove it in the first step.
2. Correct the Colors
Second, I correct the skin tone, making it look more natural and closer to the actual skin tone I have. Usually, the colors on my selfies look patchy, and there is too much of a green tone present. So, using the color curves tool, I try to restore the true colors of the skin and hair.
3. Add Dimension
The previous manipulations may leave the skin looking flat. It needs more contrast and definition. That's when I add some dimension to the selfie with a Gradient Map. You can use similar tools from a photo editing app to reach satisfying results.
4. Add Color Filters & Effects
Now for the most fun part — adding creative effects and color filters. Here is when you should refer to your brand's color schemes and fonts, if necessary. Remember not to oversaturate your selfie with extra details, the main focus should be on your face.
The Takeaway
Whether you are using a professional DSLR, your phone, or a portable point-and-shoot camera, there are a ton of ways to improve your selfies. All you need is some inspiration, a bit of time, and, of course, a few helping tools that will take your pictures to the next level. Don't be overwhelmed with details, the selfie editing process is a lot of fun, and it only gets better as your experience level grows.
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