Friday, May 28, 2010

Fix-It Friday

This week's "Fix-It" photo over at "I Heart Faces" was so adorable.  Initially I really had no idea where to begin because frankly the photo looks quite well untouched!  Here is the original.


I spent only a few minutes tweaking it and found that despite a wonderful photo to begin with there was great potential with it for post-processing.  Here is my finished result



How I edited this photo:
  1. I upped the exposure and gamma slightly
  2. Increased the brightness very slightly and upped the contrast
  3. Added a layer mask of a yellow rectangle covering the whole image.  For that rectangle I reduced its opacity to about 30 percent and gave it an inner shadow that I enlarged to almost as big as it would go.
  4. A warming filter was added
  5. Brightness and contrast were both upped slightly again, but not on the baby's bodies  (I created a layer mask)
  6. The color curve was tweaked and increased in the midtones. 
  7. Levels were adjusted using a layer mask so more was done to the background and less to the babies.  
  8. Color balance was adjusted to remove some excess yellows and add a little more blue to the image.
  9. Ever so light "dodging" was done to the chin/mouths to help alleviate the shadows and slight darker pigment around them
 I think this photo turned out absolutely beautifully.  Don't you?   


And I did a couple other edits using the finished one from above.
You can click on all the photos to view a larger image.  
Black and White, with an upped contrast from the finished image

Vintage/Ocean wash.  Lovely blue tones and vintage look added. 

To see all of this week's "Fix-It Friday" entries please visit the "I Heart Faces" site!

2 comments:

I love and appreciate all comments! If you have a question please ask away and I will certainly reply.