You know that sinking feeling when you’re culling through a session and realize you need to fix flat lighting but don’t have hours to spend in Photoshop? The baby looks adorable, the pose is natural and perfect, but the image is missing that dimensional quality that makes it really sing?
Yeah, me too. And during Christmas card season when you’re racing against lab deadlines, you definitely don’t have time to spend 20 minutes manually dodging and burning in Photoshop.
That’s exactly why I’m obsessed with Evoto’s Sculpt slider—and why I recorded this quick tutorial to show you how I use it to salvage (and elevate) images that would otherwise feel flat.
The Problem: Beautiful Baby, Flat Lighting
In the video above, I’m working with a Christmas session where the baby was positioned near a window with a fill light coming in. It’s intentionally soft and light and airy—perfect for that Christmas-y vibe—but his face lacks definition. There’s not much shadow to work with, which means the image feels a bit flat.
This happens all the time, especially when:
- Baby shifts out of position before you can adjust your lighting
- You’re shooting for a specific mood (light and airy, soft, dreamy) that inherently lacks contrast
- You’re working in challenging spaces where you can’t control the light as much as you’d like
The good news? You can fix flat lighting in seconds without ever opening Photoshop.
Step 1: The Sculpt Slider (My Favorite Tool to Fix Flat Lighting)
Under Skin Retouching in Evoto, there’s a slider called Sculpt. This is hands-down my favorite tool for adding instant dimension to baby faces when the lighting feels flat.
What it’s actually doing is burning and dodging—just like you would if you were physically contouring your face with makeup or manually dodging and burning (painting light and shadow) in Photoshop. But instead of spending 20+ minutes doing it by hand, you’re moving a slider.
The Sculpt slider has two components:
Facial Features
This adds shadow and light on either side of baby’s facial features to make them pop. It’s adding a little shadow along the sides of the nose, a highlight down the bridge, subtle shadows around the eyes—basically giving you better lighting definition than you actually had.
The key here is that it’s not changing the baby’s face. It’s just making it look like you had better lighting to begin with, which is exactly what you need when you’re trying to fix flat lighting quickly.
(also note, the sculpt slider can’t fix bad lighting. so if you’ve uplit your baby… we’re still waiting on the slider to help us there.)
Facial Contours
This one focuses on darkening around the forehead, jawline, and into the shadows. It’s adding depth around the perimeter of the face, which helps separate baby from the background and adds overall dimension.
When you use both together? Magic. In the video, you can see the before and after at 100%—it’s a significant difference. And if it’s too much (which it sometimes is at 100%), you can always dial it back to whatever looks natural for your image.
Step 2: The Makeup Section (Yes, Really)
Now, here’s where it gets interesting. If you need to take it even further when you fix flat lighting—or if you want more control over specific areas—scroll down to the Makeup section.
I know what you’re thinking: “Paige, we’re talking about a baby here.”
Stay with me.
Go to where it says Highlights and Contour. This is going to enhance what’s already there in the image. It’s not adding highlights and shadows in areas that don’t otherwise exist—it’s just boosting what you’ve already got.
Highlights
I love boosting the highlights here because it creates that little pocket of highlight on baby’s cheek. In my example, we had Rembrandt lighting happening, but it was so subtle you could barely tell. By enhancing the highlight, suddenly that lighting pattern becomes more apparent and gives the face more shape—perfect for those images where the lighting was almost there but just needs definition.
Contour
You can also add some contouring here aka shadowing, which will darken things down a bit. I typically keep this pretty subtle—somewhere around 15% for babies. The highlight can go higher, maybe around 50%, but the contour needs a lighter touch or it starts to look too heavy.
Step 3: The Makeup Suite (Proceed with Caution)
There’s one more option I want to show you, even though I rarely use it for babies: the Makeup Suite.
This is where Evoto will actually add contouring that isn’t based on what’s already in your image. You’ll see options numbered 1-6, each with different contouring patterns.
Here’s the thing: this is usually too much for a baby. In the video, you can see how it adds shadows around the nose, into the eye sockets, along the cheekbones—it’s makeup contouring, which can look great on adults but weird on babies.
That said, if you’re working with older kids or if you have parents in the frame and want to add a little dimension without doing it manually, this is a fantastic option. It’s just not something I typically use on newborns.
Why This Matters (Especially Right Now)
If you’re in the thick of holiday sessions like I am, you know that efficiency isn’t optional—it’s survival. When you’ve got Christmas card orders that need to get to the lab before deadlines, you can’t afford to spend hours in Photoshop trying to fix flat lighting on every image.
These Evoto tools give you professional-quality results in literally seconds. The sculpting is subtle enough that parents would never know you “fixed” anything, but impactful enough that you can see the difference immediately.
And honestly? Sometimes it’s not even about fixing a problem. Sometimes it’s just about taking a good image and making it great.
Watch the Full Tutorial
I walk through this entire process step-by-step in the video above, showing you exactly where to find each tool and how much to adjust each slider. You’ll see the before and afters in real-time, which makes it way easier to understand what each adjustment is actually doing to fix flat lighting quickly and efficiently.
Want to Try Evoto?
If you’ve been on the fence about trying Evoto, this is a good time to jump in. The sculpting tools alone have changed how I approach editing—and I haven’t even gotten into all the other time-saving features yet.
You can use my code GLEANCO for 15% off annual subscription plans or 20% off if you go with the 200-credit pay-as-you-go option: https://evoto.ai/c/gleanco
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to editing. These Christmas cards aren’t going to edit themselves, and that lab deadline is breathing down my neck.
Cheers to making flat lighting work for you,
Paige
psst…. having a baby in Boise? Come see us in the studio for a newborn photography session! Check out our luxury lifestyle studio and learn about all our services here.
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