Damien Symonds

There are several methods. Here's one I'm fond of: Duplicate the Background layer Go to Filter>Other>High Pass. Begin with the Radius at 0, and slowly take it up and find the sweet spot where the freckles are being exaggerated the most (the whole image will be grey at this point). As you play with the slider, you'll see that if you go too low, the freckles won't be getting their maximum punch, but if you go too high, the freckles won't be getting any additional punch, all you'll be doing is exaggerating other things. Find that sweet spot. After pressing OK to perform the High Pass filter, change the layer's blend mode to "Hard Light". Finally, add a mask to the layer and mask it to the freckled part of the face only. By the way, if you want an even stronger result, you can duplicate that High Pass layer. Heck, I suppose you could duplicate it as many times as you want, but it would start to look a bit weird. Oh, also by the way, you can use "Overlay" blend mode for a slightly gentler result than Hard Light gives. Here's my play with the above method:

I agree with Samantha.

Terrific! Now you can go to the folder of files, and move them to wherever you want them. Then browse them in Bridge, and edit.

The leap of faith

Everything looks absolutely fine at my end. Viewing in both Photoshop and Bridge, the PSD looks the same as the jpeg. Just downloading the Tiff now ...

How did it go?

I'm so sorry Julie, clean black-and-white processing is all covered in my Levels Class, so I can't share the methods here. I hope you understand. I hope you like this, though:

Can you explain what you mean by a "gradient filter"?

Next, make sure you do this so you can rescue the files trapped in Lightroom.

Oh gee, are you sure about this? It's unflatteringly dark. Is your calibration up to date?

Do you mind sending me that weird TIFF file so I can see how it looks on my computer?

No, no, not at all. There's just a little setting in the Preferences of some calibrators that can affect how images appear in non-Photoshop programs; however I don't think it applies to you or your Smile.

Gosh, good question. One of those things that's more obvious afterwards than at the time of shooting, I guess. I'm confident I can help with this. Go ahead and do your raw processing (don't forget noise removal) and post again for me.

Interesting. What about if you flatten the layers and save as a jpeg? I assume that's fine?

Hi Amity, what file format are you saving? Also, which other programs are you viewing in? Also, which X-Rite calibrator do you have?

Great! The first step to a better workflow is knowing how terrible Lightroom is. Usually it takes more effort on my part to convince people of that. So I'm glad you've already done the work for me. Your first step is to download and install Adobe Bridge, if you haven't already. It's among the programs you have with your CC subscription. Then, start by watching this video, and this one.

The very first FAQ

Yes, the "80/90/100/etc" options are correct. As I said in my instructions, use 80 the first time.

You do have Bridge. If you have Photoshop CC, simply go to the CC control panel and download and install it. If you have a version of Photoshop which came on disk, Bridge will be there too.

I didn't, that's the point. Absolutely no selection at all. The "Screen" blend mode does all the work.

Nah, go with 1600, that's fine.

I must say that's not quite what I expected. Did you definitely use "Multiply" mode?

Hi Ashley, it should be sufficient to add a "Solid Color" layer of that colour, and set it to "Multiply" blend mode. Then carefully mask on. After the masking is completed, double-click the layer thumbnail to tweak the colour a bit further to your taste. (Well, your client's taste).

In this example, I desaturated, darkened, and blackened the background of your glass ... ... then I'm able to Place it on a photo on "Screen" layer blend mode:

This is really important - can you see the difference between your photo and the other one? Your photo is essentially a light glass on a dark background (whereas the other one was a dark glass on a light background). This difference dictates what you can do with the image. Yours can only ever be against a dark background.