Masters Academy

Challenge Image: Prom Part 1

In this lesson, I start to tackle a challenge image that was submitted by a Masters Academy member. It’s a photo captured in mixed lighting where half the face is sunlit while the rest is in the shade. We’ll try to reduce the extreme contrast in the image as well as retouch out distracting elements in the background using Adobe Camera Raw. Everything I do in ACR can also be accomplished in Lightroom Classic if you prefer to use it, but I use ACR any time I’m working on an image that I don’t want to retain in my image archives.

Note: The downloadable practice image for this lesson has been compressed into a .zip archive. That means you’ll need to double-click on the image after downloading to extract its contents before attempting to use the image in Photoshop.