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Maybe you think glamour photo editing is reserved for professionals with expensive software. I will help you learn smoothly here! Find beginner-friendly editing tricks in this guide along with easy professional editing steps.

What Is Glamour Photo Editing?

Glamour photo editing is the process of enhancing and retouching photographs to highlight and accentuate the subject’s beauty, often giving the image a polished and high-fashion appearance. This type of editing typically involves several techniques, including skin smoothing, color correction, lighting adjustments, and adding effects to create a sophisticated and glamorous look.

let’s break down the key differences between basic retouching and achieving that glamorous look.

What Is The Differences between Basic Retouching and Glamour Photo Retouching

Now that you have a clear idea, I will show you some beginner-friendly glamour photo editing tips.

Basic Glamour Photo Editing for Beginners

As mentioned in the beginning, you don’t need fancy equipment or years of experience.

If you are a beginner and want to give your photo a glamorous look here are 4 easy-to-use online tools that you can use to achieve the stunning result.

1. Fotor

Fotor is a user-friendly online photo editing tool perfect for beginners. It offers a wide range of filters and effects specifically designed for glamour photo editing. With its intuitive interface, you can easily enhance your photos with features like skin smoothing, wrinkle remover, and makeup enhancement. 

Fotor also provides templates and design elements to further customize your images, making it a great all-in-one tool for creating glamorous photos

2. GIMP

GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a powerful, free, and open-source photo editing software. While it has a steeper learning curve compared to other tools, it offers professional-level features that allow you to perform detailed glamour photo editing. 

GIMP includes advanced tools for retouching, color correction, and adding effects, making it suitable for users who want more control over their editing process. With GIMP, you can achieve high-quality, glamorous results once you become familiar with its capabilities.

3. Canva

Canva is a versatile design tool that is exceptionally beginner-friendly, offering a variety of templates and easy-to-use editing tools. While Canva is primarily known for its graphic design capabilities, it also provides effective photo editing features. 

For glamour photo editing, Canva includes options for applying filters, adjusting brightness and contrast, and using effects like vignette and blur. Its drag-and-drop interface allows you to quickly enhance your photos and create stunning visuals with minimal effort.

4. Adobe Lightroom

Adobe Lightroom is a professional photo editing software widely used by photographers for its powerful editing capabilities and intuitive interface. For glamour photo editing, Lightroom offers advanced features like precise color correction, exposure adjustments, and skin retouching. 

It also provides preset filters that can instantly give your photos a glamorous look. While it is more complex than some other tools, Lightroom’s comprehensive features make it an excellent choice for those serious about photo editing.

5. Pixelied

Pixelied is an online photo editing and graphic design tool designed to be easy to use for beginners. It offers a variety of templates, filters, and effects that make it simple to create glamorous photo edits. 

Pixelied’s intuitive interface allows you to quickly adjust colors, apply overlays, and add text or graphics to your images. It also includes specific tools for retouching, such as skin smoothing and blemish removal, making it a great option for enhancing the glamour of your photos with minimal effort.

After knowing about the tools and applications, you must know about the key editing steps involved in basic glamour photo editing work.

Key Steps & Techniques For Basic Glamour Photo Editing                                                                                               

There will be many more steps in the whole process of editing. However, I will tell you about the main techniques editors or retouchers generally apply carefully to achieve a polished, glamorous look without appearing artificial. But now for basic glamour photo editing here are a few techniques that you should keep in mind.

1. Lighting and Contrast

One of your important tasks is to explore lighting. Adjust the lighting to highlight what matters most. It’s all about creating a dramatic effect without losing those essential details.

2. Skin Smoothing

Next, comes the magic touch of skin smoothing. You want to keep it subtle, maintaining that natural texture while banishing any pesky imperfections. 

Skin smoothing needs a lot of technique to know in Photoshop. It takes time to complete the task. The method is quite complicated. You must have enough knowledge about Photoshop and glamour retouching. Beginners make mistakes they are applying skin smoothing. You can easily do skin smoothing in Photoshop. You can use photo correction services for skin smoothing. Soft edge brush works excellent for skin smoothing. 

3. Selective Adjustments

Now, let’s get specific. You need to zoom in on those captivating eyes, those luscious lips. Edit or retouch them just enough to make them pop. It’s all about highlighting the best features while keeping it real.

4. Color Manipulation

Let’s talk color. This is where you set the mood, the tone of your glamour masterpiece. Whether you’re going for warm and inviting or cool and edgy, color grading is what you need to do.

Color correction is applied for removing the red-eyes effect. Changing the whole color of a digital image, color correction service is needed. An unbalanced set of colors can make your image dull and lifeless. You can achieve a high level of perfection with the color correction of professional image retouching services.

5. Teeth whitening:

One of the key elements for glamour retouch is teeth whitening. It is a mandatory element of photo retouching. For a perfect fashion photograph, white teeth with a smile are unavoidable. Editors use saturation layer adjustment to make teeth white. Professional photo editors have a full array of Touch up tools. It is easy to go for a full face of stunning makeup within a very short time. They use teeth whitening tools to obtain the look that they want. Use simple Saturation adjustment to whiten and brighten teeth in Photoshop.

Advanced Techniques To Achieve a Professional Look

If you’re aiming to inject a whole new level of glamour and sophistication, whether you’re going for a high-fashion vibe or just want to add elegance to your portraits.

1. Black and White with a Pop of Color

Make your photos black and white, but keep certain elements, like lips or jewelry, in color for a timeless and glamorous look.

2. Background Makeover

Replace boring backgrounds with fancy settings like cityscapes or luxurious interiors to make your pictures more interesting and sophisticated.

3. Add Sparkle and Glow

Use glitter overlays or light effects to make your visuals look magical and captivating.

4. Enhance Hairstyles and Makeup

Make styled hair and makeup shimmer to give your subjects a more glamorous appearance.

5. Get Creative with Cropping

Crop your images in interesting ways and add a fade around the edges to draw attention to your subject and create a dramatic effect.

Tip: However, depending on the software you use, you can get pre-made settings with one click to achieve a glamorous look instantly.

Download Glamour Photo Editing Presets

Quick Tips: Choose presets based on- 

1. Desired mood (Classic, edgy etc.)
2. Lighting in your photo
3. Editing software compatibility
4. Fine-tune after applying for a perfect fit

Regardless of the presets, as a dedicated learner, also if you aim to provide a service you need to know how to edit glamour photos in Photoshop. Let’s switch to that now.

Professional Glamour Editing In Photoshop

Of course, presets do a wonderful job, and save time. But, there will be times, when no presets might be suitable for the image you need to edit.

Look at the picture on the left—an outcome of meticulous glamour photo editing. Let’s see this advanced Photoshop method and get ready for manual edits.

Step 1: Blemish Removal

First, you need to check the skin to identify the imperfections. For instance, here I have removed the freckles from the hand of the model.

To do that, I utilized the “Clone Stamp Tool”. Window > Tools > Look for the Icon That Looks Like a Rubber Stamp.

Now set up the tool:

Choose a Brush: In the options bar at the top of the screen, you can choose the brush size and hardness.

Set the Sample Point: To set the sample point (the area you want to clone from), hold down the Alt key (Windows) or Option key (Mac) and click on the area you want to sample.

Start Cloning: After setting the sample point, move to the area where you want to apply the clone and click or drag to paint with the cloned pixels.

Step 2: Skin Smoothening

Next, the editing target is mainly the face. To apply a glammy appearance, I applied some filters.

Here, I applied a Gaussian Blur. Then, I changed the blending mode to Vivid Light. After that, I used a Highpass Filter.

Note: You have to set proper radiuses while using Gaussian Blur and High pass. How to do that?

Learn to set a radius in our other blog.

Have a close look at the picture below and see the difference on the skin as I applied Gaussian Blur and High pass Filter.

Step 3: Final Touches

To finish the photo editing, I used a Color Balance Adjustment Layer and fixed the brightness/contrast, and vibrance.

Also, I work on the Selective Color to do some detailed corrections and bring out the finest outcome.

You can see the result in the image below along with the editing process. 

The video below shows another amazing glamour edit. The main steps that you will see are: Create a gradient map, Apply a layer gradient mask, Create a clipping mask and colorize, and Refine the skin.

Final Notes

Glamour photo editing is accessible to everyone, not just professionals. This guide covers the basics, software options like Fotor, GIMP, Canva, and Adobe Lightroom, and essential editing steps such as lighting, skin smoothing, and color manipulation.
Advanced techniques and presets can further enhance your photos, making them polished and luxurious. Start experimenting with these tools and techniques to transform your portraits into stunning, glamorous masterpieces. So, choose your software, and apply the techniques. Don’t hesitate to share your work and progress in the comment section. Also, do check out our other blogs on Photoshop editing.