How to Enhance Your Makeup Looks in Photos

Love doing makeup but don’t love how the end result always fails to pop in pics? The struggle is real but, as usual, we’ve got a few solutions for you! While many of our users rely on our Makeup sets to completely transform their looks, our Build Looks elements are a makeup artist’s best friend. With the option to select individual elements, such as lips, blush, eyeliner, and more, you can enhance specific areas on the face to ensure the on-camera look reflects real life. Ready to take your makeup photos to the next level with AirBrush? Keep reading!

Lips

woman wearing a bold red lip

There’s nothing like a simple, clean complexion combined with a bold lip. But depending on your product or the lighting at the shoot, the true hue of the lips can get washed out. The Lips menu carries several hues of bold shades that you can play around with for an interesting effect. Which bold red lip suits the look best? Or would you prefer orange or brown? Just like the real thing, a bold lip color enhances your makeup to totally change the mood of a look.

Blush

woman in white t-shirt

Blush is a personal favorite of ours, and it’s a shame if the effects of blush are lost in the final photo. For all skin tones, it works to add alluring color and can highlight the face beautifully. Enhance your makeup with flattering colors and the ability to increase or decrease the intensity to your preference. Get that rosy, youthful flush under Build Looks’ blush and you may just find yourself loving your cheeks, buccal fat and all. 

Eyebrows

woman in red top

It’s highly possible that trends in eyebrows have the quickest turnover. As such, you won’t want your brow skills to get lost in photos. Trends have gone from highly-arched, barely-there wisps to heavy, censor-type blocks to the current reincarnation that appears in the “clean girl” aesthetic. That last calling for full, well-groomed but natural-looking brows. It’ll be quite interesting to see where the next iteration takes us. Whichever style you go for, make it stand out with AirBrush Eyebrows.

Eyelashes & Eyeliner

red head woman in roll neck

Since these are super small but significant elements in your makeup look, we thought we’d do a smash-up. Getting mascara to stand out in a headshot is harder than you might think. The options in Build Looks’ Eyelash have the range to sort your photos out. That means popping the eyeliner and lashes that can take your model from natural to full glam baddie. The toggle bar controls how dark and intense you want them to be. Eyeliner adds to the mix with an eclectic choice of liner shapes and colors. Enhance your makeup with theatrical Sorceress or keep it cute by applying Natural.

Eyeshadow

young woman in denim jacket

Finally, we come to eyeshadow. If you’re just starting out, your palette may not have the pigment payoff translate on camera. In terms of enhancing your makeup, the Eyeshadow options are endless, going from bold, bright or shimmery to a skin tone tint. That means you can find a look that matches your original to get it to pop. There are twenty-eight options to discover and draw inspiration from.

Important to note…

Skin Tone

woman leaning against a tree trunk

Although not found under the Build Looks section of AirBrush Makeup, Skin Tone is the tool that will offer you flexibility with color. This tool falls under the Retouch tab and is extremely versatile. You can choose from the default skin tones to perfect the complexion in your photo or you can enhance other makeup elements. There is the color picker that allows you to choose any hue in the visible color spectrum or choose an existing color in the photo. Enhance your makeup by matching your makeup to an accessory. Skin tone will make sure it’s seen. Or experiment with contrast color contour just to try something new.

Save Sets

red haired woman
woman in light blue clothes

If your mixing and matching to enhance your makeup yields a combination that you absolutely love, you can save it as a Build Looks Set. Saving the set means that you come back to it again and again with no need to remember exactly what options and what intensity you used. This is also a great place to keep a barely enhanced photo as we’ve mentioned before, which you can use to create even more custom sets.

woman with her chin in her hand
woman sitting at a table with flowers

woman smiling


We know that was a lot but well worth it, don’t you think? Having these options at hand help make experimentation and enhancement a lot more fun since you can go for looks outside of your comfort or regular repertoire. Enhance your makeup looks with AirBrush, the easy photo editor and challenge yourself to recreate the looks you come up with. When you’re ready to post and share, be sure to tag us with #AirBrushApp and then follow us @AirBrushOfficial for the latest tips, tricks and hacks.

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