 Hey everybody, it's Craig back to here in this video. I'm gonna share five awesome portrait tips with you to quickly improve your photos of people. Now make sure you stick around to the end of this video because I'm also gonna walk you through some portrait retouching steps of this image and that will take your photos to another level as well. All right, let's start with tip number one and it's all about lighting. So your job is to create flattering lighting for your subjects, whether you're shooting natural light or off-camera flash. You have to focus on the lighting and the shadows in your portrait. Now I recommend using off-camera flash because it makes your job a whole lot easier. You can control the quality and the direction of the light and I suggest using a modifier that's 36 inches in diameter and at least two layers of diffusion. It doesn't matter if it's a $50 speed light, get that off your camera, diffuse that light and you'll create flattering light for your subjects which brings us to tip number two. Now tip number two is to remove as many distractions as possible from your background so the focus is on the person. Also, you can blur that background by shooting at F-14 and then that will take the focus from the background to what's important. It's all about the person in the photo and those are gonna help you. So tip number three is really big and this could make or break your shot. It's really all about the person's expression. So pay close attention to their eyes and to their mouth. Let's start with the eyes. Make sure that their eyes aren't wide and they look afraid or shocked. Make sure that they just relax their eyes. Tell them to go for like a movie style gaze like a movie star look that you'd see in a movie. Have them relax their eyes a bit and then look at their mouth and make sure they're not tense in their mouth area. Have them relax their mouth a bit and then if they have a nice smile, make sure that they have a natural looking smile that it doesn't look fake or forced. Now that brings us to tip number four. Pay close attention to the height of their chin. Often you'll see people like to raise their chin up a bit. Make sure that they lower it until you get that look that you know you're looking for and you'll see it when you see it. You'll just know. You'll just say lower your chin, lower your chin. If they go too far, you'll know. Just pay close attention to the height of that chin. That's important too. Now tip number five is all about posing. So if you're shooting anything other than headshots, you really wanna pay attention to what they're doing with their arms and their body and you wanna make sure that you're creating angles, lines and shapes. So always think about that. Always think about creating a bend in the arm. Think about creating gaps so that they don't look too thick or too wide. Always think about creating leading lines with their arms, with their elbows. So think about that. So let's recap really quickly and then we'll get to Photoshop. So tip number one, create flattering lighting. It's all about lighting. Tip number two, remove distractions. Tip number three is all about the expression, the eyes and the mouth. Tip number four, watch that height of the chin. And tip number five, posing, create angles. Chin down a bit. Perfect, right there, hold it there. Chin down a little more. Perfect, hold it right there. All right, let's head over to Photoshop and have a look at this image and all the different layers that I used. All right, so here we are in Photoshop and if you look to the right-hand side of this video, you'll see all of the different layers that I use in my portrait retouching workflow. If you'd like to learn more about my portrait retouching workflow, I have a link in the description box below this video to a 30 minute tutorial where I walk you through everything step by step. But you could see I use a lot of different layers and I start with the healing layer first and then a couple of dodge and burn layers and then I just sort of go from there step by step adjusting all the different aspects and it could really take your image to the next level. If you wanna check out that video, just make sure you click on the link in the description box below. I'll also put a link right here in the video. You can click on that and you can also watch that video after you watch this one. All right, thanks for watching this video. If you found these tips helpful, give me a thumbs up for this video. Also, if you have any comments or questions, you can leave them down below. Also, feel free to share this on the web. Just look below this, click on share. You can share this on Facebook groups, photography forums, wherever you'd like. Blogs, it doesn't matter. Also, make sure you check me out on Instagram. I'll put my Instagram up here. Drop by, visit me on Instagram and follow me on Instagram as well. A lot of the portraits that you see in my videos are also on Instagram and extra ones that aren't on my YouTube channel as well. And thanks again for watching this video. If you're not already a subscriber, hit that subscribe button and make sure you hit that bell notification because that will notify you when I do a live stream. So go ahead, subscribe. If you're not already a subscriber, give me a thumbs up, leave a comment and I'll see you in the next video.