For this order, the original image was taken against the sun, which is why the head of the lady looks hazy and faded. In cases like this, we can improve the contrast in the hazy area slightly, but the edit will not look realistic unless we match the lighting. If the customer has chosen a Lookbook design that doesn't match the original lighting, we can look for elements in the background where light could be coming from (windows, lamps, fireplaces, sky, etc.), and simply paint in the light. Instead, the editor tried adjusting her contrast and burning the highlighted parts. The second version below was approved. But the customer re-edited, as she was unhappy with the way her face and hair looked.

Version 1

Version 2

Version 3

Version 3 is what we want to send to the customers! Instead of adjusting the subject to fit the background, we can adjust the background to fit the subject. I created a light beam coming from the chandelier, to match the highlight and fade effect on the woman’s head. This was done by painting on a new layer with a soft brush, blurring as needed, and then setting it to Screen or Color Dodge Blend Mode. The customer was thrilled with the results and gave the order 5 stars!

Here are some tutorials on adding light sources:

For this order, the customer submitted an image with quite a few issues: poor quality, dark, noisy, harsh purple color cast.

When we receive these types of images, instead of over processing the subjects and adding too much brightness and contrast, it's better to work on the background first and make it match them as best as possible. If we brighten the original too much to begin with, we introduce even more noise and pixelation (see first version below). Here is a video on this topic: