Have you ever wanted to make a high-key headshot, but don’t have studio lighting, or enough equipment to pull it off?
If you have a window, or even just a bright sky, you can! No fancy lights to learn…just a simple reflector (if you want, you can even do it without a reflector) and a bright light source behind your subject is all you need.
Place your subject in front of a bright window, the less distractions the better. Blinds, framing pieces, even trees and houses in the background can sometimes interfere. The main purpose is to get as much directly behind your subject blown out as possible. I used a reflector camera left to add some light into her face.
Here is a pullback of the subject in front of my sliding glass doors.
Upload your image, open in your chosen editor (I use ACR, Lr is fine also). Make your global adjustments (white balance, exposure, contrast, etc)
You can see here that most of the window area is blown, that’s exactly what we want.
Bring your image into Photoshop
Do your normal edits. I brightened her eyes, added a bit of contrast, & fixed some blemishes.
Add a solid color layer, white
FFFFFF is white
Lower the opacity a bit on your color fill layer, so you can see your subject enough to be able to select around them.
Use the lasso tool to roughly select around your subject.
ctrl + x to cut the color fill from your subject
You can see here that there is part of the sliding door frame. You’ll use your brush tool to clean it up.
You can add a levels adjustment layer, slide the black slider all the way to the right side, and see where it needs to be fixed. Use the brush to brush on the color fill layer to that area.
Example of the levels layer with the black slid all the way to the right, after the area has been cleaned up.
Final image
If you need a bigger canvas, or more room on either side of her, it’s very simple to do by going to Image>Canvas Size and adjust the width and/or height to whichever side you like by using the anchor direction, and canvas extension color of white.
After extending the canvas to the left for more negative space
Final image
westcott giveaway!!
Thank you to Westcott for sponsoring today’s article! They are giving away a 40″ 5-in-1 Sunlight Reflector, value $59.90, to one random winner. Enter below by noon on Friday June 13th!
Great tips! When I shoot into direct light like this, I usually get haze though. How do you avoid that?
Jacki, using the reflector reduces/eliminates the haze.
Natural light
Awesome, Crystal! My favorite kind of lighting is golden hour backlighting, but I’m a big fan of moody directional lighting too <3
Thanks Crystal!
I love natural light best but do love to play with strobes as well.
Natural all the way!!
Natural light with reflectors is always m first choice 🙂
Great tutorial. Now you can do high key without worrying about Amazon’s rights to other high key set ups. 😉
I love seeing how different photographers edit and what their go to tools are.
Thanks Crystal, great tips!
Great tips! Thanks.
I love natural light.
Great tutorial!!
Favorite light is natural light!
Thanks for the tutorial! I love natural light, but I’ve never really tried anything else:)
Thanks for the tutorial!
Still very much learning and have a long way to go. Natural light produces some lovely images and the best thing is…its free!
Great, clear instructions. Thanks for sharing this!
Great tips, thanks for sharing 🙂
Great article, I will be sharing and bookmarking this, thank you!!
what an amazing tutorial! thank you for sharing!
Awesome tutorial, Crystal!
great post, thank you!
Thanks for sharing these tips, Crystal! I love natural light, so this was really great to read!
Natural light in that golden hour…
Grieta tip! I’m actually did this kind of photo and I didn’t realize how to edit it ! Thanks !!!
*great
Thanks Crystal! This is very helpful!
Almost forgot……I love to work with natural light.
Natural light is my favorite!
I love natural light – great article!
Thanks for sharing this, Crystal! I have heard the term “high-key” before but really never knew what it meant. I currently only shoot in natural light (sometimes with a reflector), but I would love to learn how to use studio lights in the future too. 🙂
Great tutorial!
Nice post – easy to follow steps and the bonus canvas expansion tip
Thanks
Love the high key look
Natural light is the prettier, but I am more comfortable shooting with studio lights.
My favorite type of light to use in my photography is low-key lighting, as it provides the kind of contrast that gives depth to my subjects.
Thanks for the tutorial. I use combination of natural and fill flash.
Natural light most of the time.
Natural but looking forward to learning ocf
Natural light!
Strobe!
I like using off camera lighting.
I like to use natural light.
Thanks for sharing how to make a studio look, not done in a studio. Love!
I like natural light
Natural Light
Natural light
I adore natural light. 🙂 This is a great tutorial!
I love to use natural lighting. Sunlight seems to bring out my pictures.
Natural light
I absolutely love the light that comes through my kitchen window when the sun reflects on my neighbor’s home. We have light stucco walls and the light that bounces back has a soft and warm feel. My favorite for my food photos!
Thank you for the tutorial!
Can’t wait to try this.
I actually like to manipulate off camera flash lighting, natural light is awesome but so limiting.
Love natural lighting – but thankful for a speedlight on “those” kind of moments!
Natural, but someday I’d like to experiment with lights.
Would love to try out this reflector! What a great giveaway!
Natural. Beauty + occasional challenge.
Would so love this!
Oh and I love using natural light but always looking for natural reflectors in my surroundings!
Wow I never knew, I would love to try this.
Natural light all the way!
Thanks for the step by step!
Natural Lighting 🙂
Natural light is always my favorite but I hope to learn studio lighting soon!
I love natural lighting.
I love natural lighting!
Natural light is my favorite.
Natural light!
Great tips!
This is great! Thanks for sharing!
Natural lighting all the way !!
I love natural light!
Natural light but would love to try out studio!! Thank you!!
No doubt about it, natural light!
So good, thanks for sharing. I’m a fan of natural light.
Great article. Thanks for the chance to win a reflector.
Oh and natural light. Flash scares me. 🙂
I love this and can’t wait to try it!
Natural light (forgot to add to my earlier comment.
Natural all the way!
Wonderful tutorial! Extremely helpful! Who is the model? She looks just like Emily Hampshire!
thanks! She’s a girl local to me (Idaho), her name is Candis