fix it friday #45

It's Friday! I wish that I was super excited about the great things I had going on this weekend, but I'm not. My husband is out of town and my kids are STILL getting over being sick. I hope I survive.

Anyway, here is my fix this week.

Original

Such a cute girl! I love her expression. And I love the beautiful sky behind her.

my edit

Here are my steps (as best as I can remember them!):

• Cropped the image to a 5X7 with 300 ppi
• I lightened the shadows by 65%
• Use the clone tool set at 30% opacity under her eyes and then set it to 50% to work on her elbows.
• Dodged the whites of her eyes just a little
• Created 2 adjustment layers. I set the bottom one on screen (very low opacity) and the top one set on softlight (around 25-50% opacity)
• Then lighted the photo some using a levels adjustment.
• I then worked with the reds in the hue/saturation to take out some of the red in her skin.
• Then I ran Coffee Shops Perfect Portrait (to give it a slight color pop and to smooth out her skin)
• Then I ran Coffee Shops Tea Party action (with the color pop set very low and the hazy turned off)
• And last but not least I sharpened it!

I am sure this is not the most effective way to edit a photo - but it worked for me, and I really like the way it turned out!