Got some great photos of yourself, fellow belly dancers or students that are pretty good but could do with a bit of work?

It all can be done using photo programs like photoshop etc but you need a fair amount of time per photo and quite a lot of knowledge on how to use the program.

About 2 years ago I stumbled upon Portrait Professional. You can download a free trial for either Mac or PC and see what it does for yourself but what I like about it is that it is dead easy and fast.

Before

So part of the reason that I haven’t posted much lately is that I have been swapping from PC to Mac and its taking me some time to work out how to do everything the apple way. BUT because I had to re buy the mac version of the program I was left with this little coupon. I don’t get any advantages from telling you but if you like the program you may as well get the discount!

“Give your friends the coupon below (which they need to enter in the coupon box at the bottom of the buy page) and they can save 15% off the cost of any edition of Portrait Professional. ”
Coupon: LERC-OXBE-GXLH-VPAR

After

I prepared a much more obvious example of its use (below) and have struggled for nearly an hour to find where the files were put grrrr (so annoying working out a new system!). I finally succeeded though. In the example above I just rushed through and used the presets. Normally I would use it subtly and just correct a bit of lighting and remove any untimely blemishes . I am not a big fan of it resculpting faces but hey if you are into it then it can do that too.

Original picture – just a casual snap shot at the beach – no portrait pro, just a bit of lipstick.

I don’t use it for all my shots. When you have good lighting, make up and a good photographer it is often not necessary but it is nice to tidy up those that are almost a good picture but not quite.

Using Portrait pro for an improved but relatively natural look. I.e. no face or hair sculpting. Basically I fixed the lighting on the face and brightened the eyes and teeth. Photo: R. Conroy

What would have been a good idea to do here is to extend the skin smoothing to the torso as well but I only did the face as I was just doing for an example for this post. All photos took less than 5 minutes to alter – even if you have no background knowledge of how to do it, it is very easy.

Glamorous preset, face sculpting and hair smoothers used from portrait pro. I think it is over done for a beach scene but I did it so you could see the differences.

So have a look at the free trial program and see if it is for you. If you like it then use the discount code above and save some money.

What programs do you use for your dance photos? Please comment below with your dance photo related tips or tricks.