Red Gel Portrait, Hair and Skin

Beauty retouching

A portrait under a strong red gel, looking back over one shoulder, cleaned so the long hair keeps its strand detail and the face keeps its shape.

Gel lighting
Hair detail
Dodge and burn

Service: Beauty Retouching

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Retouched portrait with strand detail back in the long hair and the facial modelling rebuilt, the red gel look kept — Drag anywhere on the image, or focus the handle and use the arrow keys, to compare before and after.

Unedited portrait under a strong red gel of a model looking over one shoulder, with hair detail compressed and the face flattened — Drag anywhere on the image, or focus the handle and use the arrow keys, to compare before and after.

Project overview

A red gel pushes everything toward one hue. Strand detail in long copper hair lit red against a dark background is the hardest part of the frame, and skin under a red key loses its modelling first.

Transformation details

Luminance was recovered in the hair before any colour work, because a hue correction on top of clipped detail restores nothing.
The face was pulled back toward neutral by a small amount only, enough to read clearly without breaking the gel look the photographer chose.
Dodge and burn rebuilt the modelling the gel had flattened along the cheek and the collarbone.
Stray strands were cleaned at the outline, keeping the overall shape of the hair.