Fix-it-Friday

Well, I'm super behind on posting my Project 365 pictures - not because I haven't been taking them, but because I'm behind on editing them! Hopefully this week I'll get caught up!

Today, however, I decided to play along with I Heart Faces Fix-it-Friday link up. I love playing along with these challenges because generally the pictures are all amazingly good without any editing. This one was no exception. So, even though there seem to be a lot of steps in my edit, I feel as though I kept it fairly simple. I really didn't want to change much about the overall look of this picture because it was stunning to begin with.

Here is the picture SOOC:




And here is my edit, done in PSE9:

Finally, my edit recipe:

1. I opened the picture in Camera Raw and made the following adjustments:

Exposure +30

Blacks 5

Contrast +5

Clarity +10

Saturation +5

2. Next, I opened the image in PSE and did a clean edit:

-Levels Adjustment Layer - outside sliders in towards the middle just slightly

-Levels Adjustment Layer - middle slider to the left just a bit to brighten her face

-Created a blank layer to reduce undereye circles ... using the eye dropper, I clicked on an area of lighter skin near the eyes ... used the brush tool to brush over dark undereye areas ... lowered opacity to 80%

-Brightness/Contrast Layer ... Soft Light mode ... lowered opacity to 35%

-Flatten

-Ran MCP's Eye Doctor action ... Sharp as a Tack layer - 50% opacity ... Brighten the Iris layer - with a very small brush I lighted a small section on the outside edge of the iris

-Flatten

-Save as clean edit

3. Finally, I finished the edit with these steps:

-Ran PW's Lovely action ... using the Lighten Things layer, I brushed over the dark areas of her hair to lighten slightly

-Flatten

-I went back and forth on whether to crop or not and in the end I just gave it a slight crop

-Used High Pass Filter to give a slight sharpen

-Save

And that's it! Not a whole lot of difference, but just enough. To see more edits, you can visit I Heart Faces.