1 Minute vs 1 Hour Portrait Photo Editing

I’ve been getting quite a few messages from you asking me to go through my photo editing process and for that reason I decided to show you the difference between a 1 minute vs 1 hour portrait photo editing!

I recently took this portrait and I will show you the difference between a basic editing and a full editing process.

Unedited portrait

Usually when I offer portrait packages I have both Full and Basic Editing Packages. Many times people don’t understand the value of a full edited photo but depending on what you have in hands, it can take me from 30 minutes to 3 hours to make the perfect edit of an unique photo.

So today I will set two timers and we will see what I can do in 1 minute vs 1 hour of a portrait photo editing (watch video to see the details of me actually going through the whole process).

For the quick edit I’m going to work with Lightroom and I will basically fix light and color.

1 minute editing in Lightroom

I added some contrast. Brought up the shadows.

Brought down the highlights.

Brought up the clarity.

I split up my curves into 3 and then brought down the mid-tones, brought up the shadows and brought up the highlights.

In color I pushed the yellows to the orange side and the greens to the yellow side.

I brought the saturation to the greens and yellows down a little and brought it up to the oranges.

In luminance I made the greens a little lighter.

I sharpened up my image a little. I masked it by pressing Option and bringing the mask up so I’ll bring the sharpening up.

Then I brought the blue primary over to the left side, more to the orange tones.

With another 59 extra minutes, I could do much more:

1 hour editing in Photoshop

For this editing, I did the following processes, all in Photoshop:

1. Skin Retouch (03:33 from YouTube video)
2. Eyebrow Retouch (11:42 from YouTube video)
3. Lips Retouch (12:35 from YouTube video)
4. Eyes Details (14:05 from YouTube video)
5. Adding extra leaves to the photo (17:55 from YouTube video)

And then I brought the photo back to Lightroom to do some final adjustments of overall color and texture (21:43 from YouTube video).

What do you think? Do you see a big difference? Which one do you like better and why? If you would buy a photo session, which one would you buy?

I hope this tutorial helps you to improve your portrait photo editing.