I frequently get questions by e-mail and many times it's about how I work with my photos after the actual photo shoot. A couple of days ago I got this:

"You keep amazing me :) Would it be possible to see your sample draft work in Lightroom, at the stage of presenting it to your customers I just wonder how far from the final effect it is, because PS is unfortunately too difficult for me, and I do my efforts to tweak my pics using LR only (local adjustment brush instead of PS masking and so on...). I don't know whether to improve my LR skills or move definitely to PS... Another question - your pictures are so bright - do you use spot meter at faces at all times ?"

I post process all my photos in two steps. I go through each and every photo in Lightroom before I even show them to my clients and then I give the favourite photos selected by the clients some extra love in Photoshop before I print and deliver them (I also include the fully processed high resolution files). And yes, I usually set the exposure based on the light in the faces.

Below you can see both my basic post processing in LR and the original RAW file, without any adjustments.

And finally, here you can compare a fully retouched crop with the basic version straight from LR. In this case I have taken away some hair from the forehead, reduced some red in the eye and I have softened the skin a bit.

The couple on this photo is my wedding couple from last Saturday's wedding in Sandviken, aren't they just gorgeous!