Smooth Operator: Make More Flattering Portraits

No matter how attractive the person you're photographing, most people can benefit from a bit of digital tweaking. Here.

If you watch old movies, you've probably seen the moment where the camera cuts to a close-up of a famous leading lady, and everything on-screen gets a little soft and dreamy. This is because many of those leading ladies insisted on being shot in the most flattering manner possible, so cinematographers filmed through gauze or other diffusing material to smooth skin texture.

When you shoot still portraits today, you can use digital equivalents of these same techniques to flatter skin tones and add a bit of glamour. I'll cover two approaches. The first is a manual technique you can use in Photoshop or another image editor. The second, more automated, technique relies on Imagenomic's Portraiture 2.0, an excellent Photoshop-compatible plug-in.