Fix it Friday {165}

  I was beginning to think it had gone away, but YAY!!  It’s back, Fix it Friday at Iheartfaces.com gives you a chance to play with your editing skills.  I keep my editing to a minimum on photos I sell because I am always worried they will look over done.  But for FIF I can play with all those fun actions and the input received from fellow photographers is always very helpful and inspiring!!

For this one I used PSE8,

I first opened the image in camera raw, I adjusted the blacks to +8 and clarity to +40 and then opened the image to pse8. 

Once opened I cropped it at a 5x7 ratio, it’s a personal preference.  Anywho…

Next I ran one of my all time favorite actions “perfect portrait 2” from the coffee shop blog (if you haven’t already check out her blog, she has tons of amazing freebies) For the levels adjustment I selected the black dropper and then selected a black area of her dress.  After the action runs the first thing I always do is adjust the contrast to about 25% give or take.  The go in and smooth the skin in general and adjust that to about 40% with this one I also smoothed the out of focus areas.  Next I adjusted the vivid color layer to 50% and brushed that only over the trees and grass.  I used a large brush….95px and painted on the soft glow layer over her cheekbones, nose, chin, and across the forehead at 25%. I then flattened the image.

Third I ran mcp’s web resize and sharpen (another freebie…if you can’t tell I love freebies!! lol) and this is what I came up with.

This is the Original 

And This is my Edit

I wanted to add another edit to this because I have a new favorite action from the coffeshop blog that I am soooooo in love with, it’s called velvet cream and sometimes I can run it and nothing else and not have to adjust it at all it just turns out beautifully!!  So with this one, past everything I did above I just ran Velvet Cream, didn’t adjust the levels and when the action finished running the only adjustment I made was turning off the contrast layer.  Lemmme know which you prefer.  Do you Love velvet cream as much as me??