one of the hardest things when I first started photography 15 years ago already was editing editing portrait photography it was a fight for me and I did struggle but now obviously I've been doing it for so many years but I know when you start is quite hard and even more when you don't have an editing style yet so today I'm going to show you my workflow and how I edit my portrait photography to achieve that soft cinematic professional look in your photos and you're going to be able to see how I do it and regardless of the software you use I think you're going to be able to replicate it okay so let's go to Lightroom these are the many photos I took the other day in my home photography studio I highly recommend you to watch that video if you are into portrait photography because I show you how you can have your home Photography Studio with the minimum gear and take photos like this and I even show you some tricks for you to achieve different moods in your lighting using just one light so I'm sure you're going to love it and these photos are from this video so I have many here selected so this one is already edited this is the before the RW file it's already perfect but then with my color gradient it would be like this and you can achieve the same so let's edit this one this one is without editing this is the the rile what I do always in Lightroom I mean you have to do this as well because you're going to be way quicker at editing when you find your style create presets and then you can apply the same presets to every photo and then adjust it so that's what I do I do have my own Lightroom presets you may know that already so I have all of them here so normally for a studio photography I like to apply cinematic by laa BC and you can see here the color Gren is beautiful but OB L I had to do more things I'm not going to apply any preset because I want you to be able to do this without having any preset okay so this one goes quite well and then I have a new preset inspired in Bali which is this one Bali film C that is C and warm the cold one I'm going to give it more light it looks amazing already it's not finished I would have to change a lot of things here but you can see here with one click if you are a beginner how you can achieve an amazing color grading this is something I have to tell you I don't care if you don't get my presets okay get other photographers if you like buying Lightroom presets I did this when I didn't know how to edit in Lightroom it's very good for you to learn because when I liked an editing style from someone I got the preset and then I went to the tools bar and I checked bit by bit what that photographer did and I learned from it I was like okay I'm going to tweak this around and see what's changing I'm going to take change this I'm going to change that it's so good for you to learn but you have to take the time don't get a preset apply it and that's it take the time to learn it because you're going to be able to learn a lot from anyone's presets okay this being said I'm going to reset this because I want you to do it from zero let's go to the tools bar in Adobe Light Room the first thing I'm going to do is give it a bit more light it doesn't need too much to be honest is quite good I'm going to reduce the whites a little and the highlight a little and then I'm going to go down this is a trick I use for all my portrait photos because nowadays with amazing lenses and cameras you can see every single detail in your skin I'm going to zoom in I'm going to expose myself here you can see all the red marks and the texture is quite rough that's something that happens in a studio photography even when you are using a good diffuser okay that's totally fine we all have texture in the skin so what I'm going to do is reduce the texture here a tiny bit I'm going to do it a lot for you to see what it does don't do that okay but just tiny bit maybe minus 10 and then the clarity I reduce it a little bit as well to create a softer look in the portrait so if I Rise it terrible don't do this with your portraits so I'm going to reduce it I'm going to do it in minus 10 as well and this is already way softer than before and it's not too noticeable but I do notice it and in the end result you notice it as well so I love how it looks like already but let's go to the color grading part which is my favorite part and I'm going to keep it very simple I'm not going to go into cors because if you're a beginner probably they intimidate you they keep intimidating me the corves I swear to you so I'm going to go down this is going to be way easier than that and here in color grading I'm going to go to the shadows and something very characteristic of a cinematic look in the cinemas when you watch films pay attention to the color Gren they use a lot ail because are complimentary colors and they look incredible to the eye there is a reason for it it's color the so what I like to do is add blue in my Shadows this is being used in film a lot and I love it so I click here in Shadows and then in the Hue I go to a blue color maybe around this one and I Rise the saturation if I do it a lot see it's too much don't overdo it ever ever over doing things it's such a beginner mistake I'm going to put a teal color here yeah that is better but I'm going to reduce it maybe there so this is the before and this is the after with the blue in the shadows and I already love it it looks amazing so I'm going to go down and something I do as well is ADD Vette this I always press it remove chromatic abberation if there is any I shot this one with the 7200 f2.8 G master from Sony and with my Sony A7 R5 it's incredible look at my eye and I was using a Mist filter this is a trick you can use as well using Mist filters because it makes everything softer I love M filters I'm using one right now by the way that's why this light here is very diffuse and that gives a cinematic look in your photos as well but I'm going to teach you a trick in case you don't have M filters that you can use in postproduction to achieve this effect as well so don't worry okay let's go down viette I'm going to give a little bit reduce the midpoint and this is the before and this is the after for me it makes the difference I love to add B nette so what I've been done for now is this before and after this photo looks amazing already and something I use is a plug-in which is called luminar Neo you may have heard of it I've been sharing luminar Neo with you since I started my channel because I was using it to retouch skin way before Adobe release those tools as well and that's why I bought it it was luminar 4 by then because I was struggling to reach as a skin so let's go here and right click edit in luminar Neo in case you don't know luminar Neo yet luminar Neo works as a standalone software which means that you don't have to pay subscription and actually it's one of the cheapest software out there and it's very complete but you can use it as well as a plugin for Photoshop and Lightroom and this is how I use it because because for me Lightroom I've been using it for many years and I think there is no way I'm going to stop using adob but then luminar Neo it's great to complement adob I just love this workflow everyone is different but you can use just luminar Neo if you don't want to pay adob and what I did right now in Lightroom you can do it in Lumina Neo as well because I'll show you here when you go to edit you have in develop the same tools to adjust the light the curves the color as well everything I did you can do it as well here you don't need to have BL room to do this okay just I wanted to clarify this but I love luminar Neo because I love the portrait tools I'll show you now but I don't know you watched a video I've sh not long ago about Apper T Apper T is a new AI software just for portrait photography so now I'm going to be honest I use way more AER te because it's like luminar Neo portrait tools on asteroids and it's insane it does the job of professional retouchers just with some sliders by AI so even if you are a beginner you are going to be professional at editing portraits so I use AER more now because I'm a portrait photographer but luminar Neo it's more complete and obviously cheaper but it's more complete so if you are shooting landscape portrait St photography a bit of everything I highly recommend you luminar neo and you are very sir you're are going to be a portrait photographer aper for me e incredible watch the video so you can check it out you even have a free trial you can try it but it's very very good but Lumina Neo it's way cheaper and you can use it for all sorts of Photography okay so let's go to the face here you can add light in the face but I'm not going to do it because I already have enough but just to show you you don't have to mask anything but I'm not going to add it because I like my photos quite Moody so I'm not going to add more light I'm going to leave it like that then you can make the face slimmer before after but I never do this I never ever modify my face or my client's face they never ask me if they ask me I may have to do it but they don't ask because I just don't like to do it so I'm going to go to the eyes and I'm going to show you my favorite slider here because I don't use all of them the main one I use is eye enhancer I'm going to zoom in here for you to see this is the before and this is the after it's very natural and I like natural edit so the eyes stand out more but they are not fake okay so I use eye enhancer and then eye whitening when I need to it's very white my eye so I'm not going to do it because otherwise I'm going to look weird don't do this please because I saw photos out there that they look horrible because people overdo edits it's better to fall short on editing than actually over editing because it is screams am matur so don't do that so then after doing that what I'm going to do is go to the the skin part which is here skin and this is my favorite part because editing skin it's a pain in the ass it used to be so I'm going to go here amount if I go to 100 you can see how it Smooths my skin this is the before and the after normally the maximum I do is 40 and this is one of my favorite Tools in Upper T and luminar Neo shine removal I tried Lightroom like reducing the whites the highlights there is nothing that works as shine removal in luminar Neo I do a lot of studio photography we all have oily skin so obviously with the flash or the continuous light I'm going to shine and that's totally normal so you can reduce the shine I'm going to do it again 100% for you to see now it's very fake because it's like a mate of paper because naturally we have shiny parts so go lower I'm going to go as well like 40 more or less so this is the before and this is the after which is already very good and then something you can do to replicate the Mist filter effect is go here there are two tools mystical and glow you're going to see how amazing it looks I'm going to go to Glow this one is more harsh I'm going to rise this a little super beautiful look the before and the after for my taste it's very contrasty so you can go to advanced settings and then you can reduce the contrast if you like and you can change the temperature the softness the brightness but the other tool mystical I like it more so I'm going to cancel this one mystical is kind of similar but it's softer you will see here I'm going to overdo it which is a lot but it's more gentle so when I do a little bit maybe 20 this is the before and this is the after it makes the photo to look more dream me without being fake so this is the before and look at my skin at my eye and after so this is mainly what I would do but there is another thing that you can do to add more creativity and make it look more like film it's adding grain luminar Neo has this tool as well you can go here to film grain you can try I like to put the size bigger maybe 30 30 and if you zoom in this is the before and the after with grain I think it's quite natural I'm going to reduce it a little bit maybe 10 there you go I think this photo looks incredible and I didn't use any preset so you can do this step by step and achieve the same and I'm going to teach you a couple of things more because this is very very important and more when you have more imperfections in the skin or eye bags in AER there is an amazing tool to remove the bags I just use that now but if you don't have aery I'm going to show you how to do it click apply now luminum Neo generated a copy in th format so now I'm going to open it in Photoshop again this is my workflow I love editing photography for me is like meditating I can be hours editing things nobody will notice okay I love editing and I love the combination of these three programs but you are free to use just luminar Neo because you don't have to pay subscription if you like you can do everything there because you can also clone so you can do exactly the same I'm going to do now with cloning in luminar first I'm going to remove these two annoying red marks I have in my nose so I'm going to use the patch tool but you can use the Clone illuminar Neo as well okay there you go you go around and then you slide it that's it now I'm going to show you a trick I always use to reduce eyebags I said reduce not remove let's don't be fake we all have eyebags okay so what I like to do is retouch them but not eliminate them because it's fake we always have shadows here so what I'm going to do to reduce it is go to the Clone tool reduce the opacity normally I do 15% no more I'm going to zoom in more and then take a fairly Big Brush and very soft hardness zero always and I'm going to take a sample of a bright area of my skin pressing the option key and I'm going to paint on top of the Shadow to reduce it a little bit without overdoing it I'm going to do it again another layer there you go so this is very gentle look the before and look the after I preserve the texture of my skin and a little bit of Shadow it's very natural many photographers they do the mistake of over editing this part and then everything looks plasticky and fake so don't do this you so with the Clone stamp with low opacity say how gentle you can be with your edits preserving the texture of the skin this is the final photo it's not over edited it looks very professional and very cinematic and it has this soft feeling I love in all my photos you can achieve these results as well even if you are a beginner by following today's video and using just luminar Neo if you don't want to pay Adobe or any sort of subscription and obviously you're going to have a link below with a discount code join the free Tri for luminar Neo try it out and then you decide to go for it use the coupon code because I think it's totally worth it you can see what you can achieve with it and if you want to see how to take professional photos like this in your home please check out the video I told you before I'm going to put it somewhere here and if you want to keep learning with me on a weekly basis subscribe to my channel and like this video because it helps me a lot and I will see you in the next one Mah Big Love from Ali