SOOC Sunday #1

A new photo editing challenge, and this week it’s of my sweet sweet lil baby girl!!  I’ve been working on all hand edits lately and to stop relying on actions so much.  So here we go!!

I’ll be using PSE8 for this edit.  First I cloned out the crazy looking branch on the left side of the photo.  Next I opened a levels adjustment layer, and pulled the left slider in quite a bit to darken the image.  I then used a soft black brush at 50% opacity to paint the effect off of the skin, and just the edge of the mountain where it hits the sky (that way the edge doesn’t look quite so harsh).  I created a second levels adjustment layer and pulled in that right slider which brightens the photo.  Select the layer and press  ctrl i which removes the effect and adds a black mask to the layer.  I then used a soft white brush at 50% to paint in highlights on the cheeks, chin, and forehead and again right at the edge of the mountain.  I created yet another levels adjustment layer, in the drop down menu change from RGB to Green, and pull in that left slider which brings out all the magenta tones in the photo.  Next I created a duplicate layer and ran Gaussian blur.  For my next step I had to use an action, but it’s only because I can’t create a layer mask with pse8 (one of the downfalls, easily remedied with a free action found HERE called “add a mask”.  And so…I added a mask to my duplicate layer.  Pressed ctrl i to remove the effect from the image, and used a soft white brush at 100% opacity to paint in the effect on the mountain and at bottom of the image.  I then reduce the layer to 75%.  I reduce the brush opacity to 25% and paint over the skin to soften just a little.  I added a solid color layer, selected brown, then used a soft black brush to remove from the center of the image, creating a brown vignette and I reduced the layers opacity to just 7% making it very subtle.  Lastly I used my sharpen tool at 50% and sharpen just around the edge of the girl, her eyelashes, lips, and the flowers on her headband.  I resize the image to 960px as that seems to be the very best for Facebook,  And this is my final image!  Whatcha think??  Feedback and CC is always welcome!!

Here is a side by side