How To Take Perfect Makeup Pictures

Hey everyone! Today I would like to share my secrets on how I take and edit up-close photos of my center makeup. Existence able to practise this is actually everything if y'all are wanting to showcase looks that you lot are proud of, and perhaps what certain eyeshadow palettes tin can practise if yous are in the process of creating a review. If you are at all familiar with my web log, you will know that I really rely on close-up pictures. In fact my series' Center Look of the Calendar week and Palette Roulette specifically feature them!

Eyeshadow is my favourite part of makeup and is such an outlet for creativity, and I desire to be able to share that with you! Nevertheless, to be able to exercise this, you need the right technique. It's simple, I semi-promise.

What I am going to provide you with are 4 steps to get amazing images of your eyeshadow. The programs or methods that you lot use to complete these steps don't actually affair, so long as you exercise them (or don't, it's your life!). You will see that I utilise multiple programs to complete these steps, when the actions that I have could probably all exist done with ane programme. Merely ultimately I am a creature of habit, and what I do works for me! Then experience free to simplify things within the steps, and apply programs that you are comfortable with if you lot accept some! I'yard just sharing my personal methods.

4 Steps to photograph and edit close-upward pictures of your middle looks

Taking the picture

I'm going to give it to y'all straight: I take all of my pictures with my phone. The cameras in phones these days are really very competitive in quality with stand-lone cameras, and I see no need to use a split photographic camera. I currently accept the iPhone 7, but most iPhones and Androids accept astonishing cameras these days.

The play a trick on for taking up-close and detailed photos: use the back camera, not the selfie camera.Often in phone models, the camera in the back of the phone is better quality than the selfie camera. This leads to a problem though: yous need to be able to meet what you are taking a picture of, now that your phone is turned the other mode! I recommend taking pictures in front of a mirror, so you can see exactly what is happening on your telephone.

Before you lot start taking pictures though, let's talk about lighting. I take all of my pictures in my bathroom where I accept a mirror hands accessible. However, the lighting in my bathroom is very warm. At present, y'all can modulate the temperature of light with different lightbulbs, but I accept found the all-time manner to go a pretty good color of low-cal, and enough light in general, is by using a selfie ring light on my phone. Yes, that's correct, ane of those mini prune-on ring lights that yous tin can adhere to your phone. I bought mine from amazon, and I have been very happy with it. Information technology is rechargeable, and has three different effulgence levels. The one that I purchased is shown below, and y'all can purchase it here. Only at that place are a ton to cull from out in that location, so take your pick!

Once yous have appropriate lighting that isn't besides warm and isn't too absurd (too cool light tin actually suck the colour out of images), you tin can take your photo. I like to use the selfie light on the first effulgence setting. This leaves me with images that lean just on the warm side. I volition tell yous now, that slightly warmer images are easier to edit that images that are too warm or as well absurd (and it'due south incommunicable to go just right, for me at to the lowest degree, Goldilocks). Just yous volition learn through practice. I did!

Make sure that when your phone is pointed at your face that yous tap on the screen where your eye is so that it focuses on your eye specifically. You tin be very pointed with this if you want. I notice that if I tap roughly on peak of where my eyelashes are, information technology will focus on my lashes. However, if you lot tap on your brow, or on your lid when that eye is lowered or closed, it volition focus on your brow or your eyeshadow. Experiment with this, simply be certain to tell your photographic camera where to focus.

Another important gene is the altitude of the phone from your confront. If you have your phone too close to your heart, information technology volition not be able to focus properly. So brand sure that you lot hold your telephone far away enough, so that information technology is capable of focusing. To give yous an thought of how far away this should be, this picture beneath is a good example. Notice how my nose and my lips are included in the photo. That is how far away your phone should exist (at least for the iPhone 7; the cameras on dissimilar phones will vary). Notice that my heart appears to be in focus.

Distressing for this horrible photograph, but it was necessary to testify you how far away your phone should be!

Another tip is to take a ton of photos. The worst affair would exist to put all sorts of work into an eye look, and so realize after the fact that you didn't capture it properly! I always take pictures looking in diverse directions. My personal go-to's are looking straight ahead, and looking downwardly towards my nose. But play with it and figure out what you like!

Screen Shot 2018-08-10 at 4.56.53 PM.png — I often take 20-50 photos per eye await. Probably more than I need, but I'd rather be safety than distressing!

In order to make up one's mind which film is the best, I outset crop all of them and then select the ones that have the best focus. Use the method that works best for you!

2. Retouching

Later on I have selected the best photo(due south), I like to retouch out the uglies. The uglies include stray eyebrow hairs and whatsoever other imperfections that only do not belong! It'southward funny how those stray eyebrow hairs don't really appear until you lot're looking at a photo!

The plan that I employ to retouch is Picasa, which was created by Google. This program has since been discontinued, but you can still download it from some random websites (the i I got it from is here). I apply this program because information technology allows you to directly retouch by replacing 1 spot with a sample from another expanse, instead of averaging out the colour, which a lot of programs do. I haven't withal been able to observe another programme that allows you to do spot retouching in this way.

As you can run across below, you tin change the size of the expanse that you want to retouch, and you can zoom in to reach really tiny spots.

After retouching, this is the outcome. I also threw on my tag. Protect your works of art!

3. Smoothing texture (surrounding the expanse of interest)

I don't know about you, but I have texture to my peel. The whole point of taking photos of your eyeshadow is to showcase your look, and I wouldn't want the texture of the surrounding area to distract from it. So I use the mobile app facetune to smooth the skin in the surrounding expanse. However, y'all tin apply any editing program or app that works for you.

To polish with facetune, I transfer the photo from my computer onto my phone, and open the photo in facetune. You lot can then click on "Retouch" and then the "Smooth" tool. All you have to practice at that point is draw with your finger back and forth on the places that you desire to polish. You tin modify the level of smoothing by the sliding blue bar at the lesser of the screen (I unremarkably employ the highest level for heart pics, merely for selfies I'll reduce it to 70 or 80% so things don't look so simulated). I usually polish on all of the surfaces except for my eyebrow and eyelid etc. I volition smooth directly under my brow though, merely not whatever lower on the lid. Even if your lid is textured (like mine) still don't smooth it. It will change the dimension and colour of the eyeshadow. You can also zoom in to get into detailed areas, like betwixt your lower lashes.

Here is the consequence afterwards smoothing.

4. Editing the colour

Subsequently smoothing, I send the image back to my computer so I can do some minor color editing if it is necessary. Looking at the in a higher place prototype, it looks like the peel around my middle look is coming off too warm and red-toned. To fix this I apply the photograph editor PhotoScape X. This is a free photo editor that actually has quite a chip of editing power, and yous do have the option to purchase a subscription if y'all desire to utilise more of the functions. I don't find that that is necessary.

To edit the colour of an image, you click on the color tab.

Once y'all are in there, you tin can actually select specific areas of the photo to edit if you lot don't desire to alter the whole photo. This is the most amazing feature of PhotoScape! I love being able to selectively change a color or acuminate an area! Anyways, to select a specific expanse of the photo that yous desire to edit click the plus sign beside "Mask (Local Adjustments)". Then click the paintbrush push button, the paintbrush with a plus sign, and check the invert mask button. This all allows yous to specifically select the area that you want to edit by drawing with your mouse. The expanse that you select will prove up as highlighted red when yous are clicking on the photo.

Red= the expanse that I take drawn on with my mouse to edit. Because the area around my eyeshadow and eyebrow looks redder than I would similar, I'm merely going to edit that area. The shade of the eyeshadow looks mostly representative of what it looked like in real life then I'll go out that function.

The best way to counteract red in a photo is both with the "temperature" and "tint" options in this program. Temperature is a spectrum from orange (warm) to blue (cool) while tint is a spectrum from purple to green. Temperature starts at 6500, whereas tint starts at 0. Play with changes in levels until you are happy. As yous can meet with this photo, I increased temperature to 6900, and tint to 11. To see what the difference is in your editing compared to the original land, printing the "compare" button.

I also decided to brighten the same selected area after the fact.

Y'all can also select only the eyeshadow area if you think that needs a bit of tweaking besides. The whole point of taking photos of your eyeshadow is to make them representative of what it looked similar in real life, and cameras don't e'er capture that.

I'm not entirely sure what all the different options in the colour tab practice, but I decided to brighten, deepen and increase the vibrance.

In one case yous have applied all of your changes, relieve your file, and you have your finished photo!

The final product

Original

Edited Version

Overall, you can see that the editing didn't change a huge amount in the photograph, but it did fine-tune it. Therefore, the main thing is to take good, in-focus pictures. That'south the showtime, and most important pace.

Terminal Tips

Overall, I can recognize that I use three different programs to achieve the goal of producing an edited heart photo. While this may seem over-complicated, none of the steps have also long, and I am just used to these programs. However, about or all of this can probably be accomplished with PhotoScape X, and then give that a attempt if y'all don't already have a practiced photo editing program. I as well tin't recommend Picasa a ton, because I observe it quite glitchy, but I merely haven't constitute another editing program (that is free) that allows y'all to retouch the way it does. So information technology is valuable for that purpose. If you lot have Photoshop, I'k sure it can do everything that I have mentioned here handily. Simply I don't want to pay those dollar dollar bills yall.

Haha, ok. I hope this little "how-to" helped! If there are whatever disruptive parts, definitely don't exist afraid to inquire and comment below! I'm hither to help!

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