Give me sunshine

Are your sunlit shots getting you hot and bothered? Lauren scott shows you how to liven things up without going overboard

Whatever the genre, we all start to feel inspired and snappy when the sun is out. Unfortunately, photos taken in bright daylight can end up looking either flat and dull or too bright and harsh. This is because when the sun is higher in the sky, it throws areas – such as sides of the face or under the eyes – into deep shadow. That isn’t to say that whipping out your camera on a summer’s day is inherently wrong. Perhaps you’ve been tasked to shoot a summer clothing catalogue, or you just want to photograph friends and family at the beach. Either way, sometimes you have to work with the conditions that you’ve been given.

In this tutorial we’ll show you how to make the best of your sunlit lifestyle shots with a few tweaks. We’ll start in Adobe Camera Raw and then finish off in Photoshop CC. There’s nothing too complex here. For example, adding a vignette can lead the viewer’s eye toward your subject, deepen the background tones and add a natural frame. As for your subjects themselves, brightening the eyes and highlights in the hair will inject energy into any portrait. More often than not, you’ll be trying to fill in shadows.

Although our starting portrait straight out of the camera wasn’t too unbalanced, there were still a few adjustments we could make to give it a professional sun-kissed look and bring our model to life. The aim here isn’t to recreate a Caribbean scene, but to enhance portraits in natural light. Quick tweaks to the white balance and contrast can really make all the difference to the final result. As with all good editing, the key is to keep things subtle...