The Power of Photoshop

In the second of my series of blog posts (a series in no particular order!) about the world of newborn photography, I’m going to demonstrate the power of Photoshop. There’s far more to the software than I’ll be covering today, so I’ll call this Part One and show you some more behind the scenes stuff later!

Having recently become a parent – does nearly a year count as recent? It’s gone so fast! – I now fully understand and have experienced the unconditional love that parents develop for their babies the second they lay their eyes on them (or in the days and weeks after as can happen with some families and is totally normal!). A newborn portrait photography session is a really special way of preserving the memory of that precious and short-lived newborn phase. Unfortunately, it’s really common for newborn babies to suffer from skin conditions such as baby acne, discolouration caused by newborn jaundice, or flaking (normally found in babies who outstayed their welcome in the womb!) and photographs can tend to accentuate these. These temporary ailments will barely register on the minds of smitten parents at the time and they certainly don’t need to be reminded of them when they look back at their professional newborn portraits.

Adobe Photoshop is an incredibly powerful tool at the disposal of photographers and despite its negative association with a spot of celebrity nip and tuck, it has far more honest uses! Editing newborn photographs is not about making a baby look unnatural or different in any way, it’s simply a way of removing the not-so-cute skin problems. Moles, birthmarks and stork bites are left intact.

Some babies require minimal retouching, however the following video shows how much work can go into cleaning up bad skin. Even sped up by 500% it’s a couple of minutes long. As you can imagine, when there’s fifteen or twenty images to go through from a single session, this can take a lot of time!


I hope this has shown you just how amazing Photoshop can be; edited images don’t have to look unnatural or ‘Photoshopped’.

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Fantastic experience! I took my family for a shoot with Katie & she was amazing from start to finish. My toddler was a terror and my daughter a diva but some how she worked her magic and we have beautiful digital photos, prints and a lovely big frame for the wall. We had a lovely viewing where we were able to select the photos we wanted, we couldn’t possibly chose from them so we bought them all! 🙂 She made us all feel very welcome and my children and even my husband enjoyed the experience. Highly recommend! I will be back for more photos as my family grow. Thank you Katie

Natalie