Boudoir photography  is a highly popular type of photography nowadays. Almost all the beauties of our time dream of adding beautiful and elegant pictures to their collection or give these sensual photos to their future husbands.

Before you learn the secrets of a successful photo shoot, let's find out what is photography in the boudoir style. The boudoir direction appeared in the 20th century in France and started gaining popularity since its appearance. The main task of this photo type is to express the femininity and the beauty of the bride in wedding photo sessions or a model in fashion shootings.

Tip 1. Do Natural Skin Retouching



Skin editing means a lot in boudoir photography. Finding that perfect variant of image retouching to make skin look healthy and beautiful is a really tough task. You need to apply the level of sharpness that won’t make every pore and wrinkle of the skin visible. 

Still, without sufficient skin airbrushing, your photo won’t have that kind of professional look. So how to find a middle ground in this process? Actually, even professionals need several hours of constant work to provide an ideal retouch of their model’s skin. 

Clone and Healing tools are really helpful while editing the skin. Besides, boudoir Lightroom presets will assist you in creating gorgeous boudoir shots.

Tip 2. Adjust Skin Tone



Skin tone is one more challenge in boudoir shooting that needs a lot of image editor’s efforts, especially when you do high end photo retouching. Even with good lighting, you can find all range of tones from the darkest to lightest ones on the model’s skin. Yellow, pink, red and even green are the main shades that can be presented in the boudoir photo.

Tip 3. Use Skin Retouching Frequency Separation Technique



A Photoshop tool - Frequency Separation gives you a possibility to form two layers with high-frequency and low-frequency accordingly to edit the imperfections and colors one by one. Such layers enable editing of skin imperfections without changing their shadows and tones, leaving it for picture retouching on another level. 

The drawbacks of the Frequency Separation tool are in its usage, since shooters may go too far and spoil a nice picture. The main rule here is not to go overboard with manipulations while performing boudoir photo editing. The secret hint is to edit pictures in such a way that skin still looks perfectly natural.

Tip 4. Take Advantage of Photo Retouching Services
 


Today many photographers use proven and experienced outsourcing companies to retouch their photos. One of such services is FixThePhoto. It`s a reliable and professional photo editing service that always guarantees high-quality picture post-production in a short turnaround. Moreover, it is possible to order photo retouching in your style.

Tip 5. Reduce Noise



Another widespread problem is noise reduction. Boudoir photo editing of shots taken in low lightning may be a tough task even for professionals. Though improving the pixel quality shouldn`t be a hard process, you will still spend a lot of time editing pictures to achieve the desired result. 

Below are a few steps for successful noise reduction:

• For lower Noise Levels, take your photos at 100, 200, 400 and 800 ISO
• Apply the ‘Reduce Noise Filter’
• Adjust the Surface Blur to achieve noise reduction
• Review the noise level on the RGB channels

Tip 6. Whiten Teeth



Everyone wants to have nice-looking white teeth in the photos. Due to some physical peculiarities of low lighting, shots may show your models’ smile not as perfect as you wanted it to be. 

Images, especially high-end ones, need a model to look brilliant, so the task of glamour photography editing is to remove teeth yellowness.
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Tip 7. Enhance Lips
 


Since each detail of the model`s look is clearly visible in boudoir shots, each element needs to look perfect. Lips are another thing to concentrate your attention on. It`s essential to add some gloss or increase saturation and brightness while retouching photos. Usually, you need to edit lip contour to give it a perfect look in close-up photos.

• The 1st layer should be smoothed to create a foundation for future glamour photography editing
• Using the Adjustment Brush tool, add warm colors to highlight lips
• To add gentleness, apply Clarity and Contrast reduction
• Do not apply the same brush for the mouth

Tip 8. Add “Digital Make-up”


 
The best way to have a gorgeous look of all boudoir shots is to have a personal make-up artist who would help reach perfection in your model’s look. This is not always possible to have a pro by your side but an ideal make-up is still essential. 

While taking high-end fashion photos, sweat or any other moisture can spoil the make-up. But that’s not the reason to stop shooting since a digital make-up will always come to the rescue and save results of your hard work.

• Apply the Radial Filter to highlight the irises
• With the help of Spot Healing and Clone Stamp tools, neutralize wrinkles or creases
• Adjust Sharpening settings for the red channel
• The Patch tool and Clone Stamp will help you make dark circles under the eyes less visible
• Check that the skin tone of the model`s face and body is the same

Tip 9. Get Rid of Flyaway Hair


 
It`s pretty hard to create a perfect hairstyle, which looks silken and natural while shooting boudoir photography. With close-up shots, even small imperfection can make all shooters work null and void. 

This problem is typical for all outside photo sessions when the wind is making its own hairstyle for your model. Since high-end fashion photos require well-groomed hair, Photoshop tools will help you in the process of glamour photography editing.

• Use the Feathering and Contrast sliders to achieve soft or sharp selection edge
• Take advantage of the Healing brush tool
• Control the use of the Healing brush not to remove all flyaway hair but to make it less visible

Tip 10. Remove Distracting Objects



It happens that some unnecessary objects get into the frame. They can spoil the shot and distract the audience’s attention from the main message even if it`s a small detail. With Photoshop tools, you can save your photo by removing undesirable elements.

• Apply the Spot Healing brush to erase small elements
• To make fast glamour photography editing, use Content-Aware Fill, Content-Aware or Content-Aware Move tool
• Adjust the Extend Mode to eliminate all needless objects without spoiling the overall frame
• To undo the action, you need to select Command + Z (Windows Undo = Control + Z)