1. Clean this photo up
Clean up the lighting, exposure, colors, contrast, and sharpness so this looks like a professional photo. Keep the face, body proportions, clothing, and framing exactly the same. Keep it natural. Don’t make it look fake or overprocessed.
2. Give it the pro treatment
Make this look like someone took the time to get the shot right. Improve the lighting, framing, colors, and detail. Add some natural background separation where it helps. Keep the subject looking exactly like themselves. Don’t go overboard with the editing.
3. Make this one look expensive
Give this photo a polished, high-end look that would work well on Instagram. Get the lighting right, bring out the colors, and give it a little depth. Keep the skin natural and the person recognizable. Don’t change their face or proportions.
4. Get the lighting right
Fix the dark areas, blown-out highlights, and harsh shadows. Make the light softer and more even without flattening everything out. Keep the skin tones and colors realistic. Leave the person and the surroundings alone.
5. Bring in that late-day sunlight
Make this look like I took it during golden hour. Add warm sunlight with believable highlights and shadows. Give it a little atmosphere, but don’t turn everything orange. Keep the subject, face, clothes, background, and framing exactly the same. Just change the lighting.
6. Add a little movie mood
Give this photo some cinematic warmth, depth, and contrast. Work on the lighting, colors, and shadows, but keep it subtle. Don’t change the person, their features, clothes, or surroundings. I still want it to look like a real photograph.
7. Give the background some attention
Clean up the background and make it look better without changing the main subject. Keep the environment believable and make sure everything fits the original lighting and perspective. Leave the person’s face, body, clothes, and position exactly as they are.
8. Get the extra stuff out
Remove the distracting stuff in the background. Fill those areas properly so nobody can tell anything was there. Don’t touch the person, face, body, clothing, lighting, shadows, or framing. Remove the distractions and leave everything else alone.
9. Make this a portrait worth keeping
Give this the look of a well-shot professional portrait. Use flattering light, clear facial detail, natural skin texture, and a little separation from the background. Keep the person looking like themselves. Don’t reshape their face or smooth their skin into plastic.
10. Put this on a magazine page
Make this look ready for a nice lifestyle or fashion magazine. Improve the lighting, composition, colors, and detail. Give it a finished look without making the person look heavily edited. Keep their actual face, features, and natural skin texture.
11. Take this back to the ’40s
Make this look like a real photo from the 1940s. Use black and white with rich tones, good contrast, a little film grain, and some gentle softness. Keep the people, faces, proportions, clothes, objects, and setting unchanged. No fake scratches, borders, or added text.
12. Bring on the ’50s color
Give this the look of a well-kept color photo from the 1950s. Use warm colors, soft highlights, gentle contrast, and a little film grain. Keep the skin tones believable. Don’t change faces, clothes, hairstyles, objects, or the background. Just change how the photo looks. No borders or text.
13. Give me that ’60s film look
Make this look like a color slide from the 1960s. Bring out the blues and greens, warm up the highlights, and add a little film grain. Keep the colors strong but believable. Leave the people, faces, clothing, objects, and composition alone. No fake damage, borders, or text.
14. A little ’70s warmth
Make this feel like a color print from the 1970s. Add warm tones, slightly muted colors, softer blacks, and a little grain. Some gentle fading is fine, but don’t make it look ruined. Keep the people, faces, clothes, background, and framing the same. No light leaks, borders, or text.
15. Make this look like 1985
Give this the look of a normal snapshot from the 1980s. Use lively colors, a little film grain, and that printed-photo contrast. Add a subtle camera-flash look if it fits the scene. Don’t change faces, body proportions, clothes, objects, or the background. No neon effects or added ’80s props.
16. Straight from a ’90s disposable camera
Make this look like it came from a disposable camera in the 1990s. Add some grain, slightly imperfect exposure, subtle color shifts, and softer corners. Use direct flash only where it makes sense. Keep the people, faces, clothes, objects, and framing unchanged. No date stamps, fake scratches, or borders.
17. Make this look like 2003
Give this the look of a photo taken with one of those little early-2000s digital cameras. Slightly punchy colors, crisp edges, a little noise in the shadows, and a casual flash look where appropriate. Keep everyone recognizable and the details clear. Don’t change faces, clothes, objects, or framing. No timestamps or text.
18. Make people stop scrolling
Make the subject stand out right away. Improve the lighting, framing, sharpness, and contrast. Bring out the colors without making them look fake, and give the subject some separation from the background. Keep it looking like a real photo. Don’t add words, graphics, or effects.
19. Bring out the detail
Make this photo cleaner, sharper, and more detailed. Improve the lighting, colors, edges, and textures while keeping the original subject and composition. Work with the detail that’s there. Don’t invent things or redraw the image. I want a better-quality version of this same photo.
20. Give this the works
Go through this photo and fix what needs fixing: lighting, exposure, colors, contrast, sharpness, composition, background, and distracting details. Keep the person’s identity, face, body proportions, clothing, and important objects exactly the same. Don’t change things that don’t need changing. Make it look like a really good photographer took the original shot.
