I ♥ Faces - Fix it Friday - #38- Baby Blue

Original

Things I notice; 

The little boy is VERY cute!

The photo is a little under-exposed.

The background is good, but bits of it are distracting.

The little man needs a bit of 'punch and pull'!

He also has a slightly sore mouth that needs 'healing'.

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Edit one.

Nearly all of my essential editing I now do in Gimp - I have grown to really love it!! After I have it where I want it, I take my work in and out of PSE7 / Picnik & Lightroom to 'play' with it! (I also love LR, but don't want to attach myself too fondly as I only have the beta trial until April - and I can't afford to buy it after that if I want to save for that longed-for DSLR).

High pass sharpen whole picture.

Luminosity sharpened just his eyes (with a layer mask) 

Add a grain-merge layer (faded)

Heal the marks on his face (mouth & nose)

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Edit Two

Cropped

Spent ages cloneing on his left side to make it look better and less distracting!

Add a hue layer of light 'beige' (faded) - merged down

Copied layer and changed to faded screen.

Layer masked and edited his right eye, which was significantly darker than his left & a slightly different colour too! I took the colour of his  left eye and painted it onto his right, faded out, and brightened. Made the layer an addition layer and faded out to blend.

Layer mask and dodged the whites of his eyes.

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Edit Three

I can't remember what I did next!! 

I know I tweeked the 'levels' somewhere along the line..!

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Edit Four

Applied CoffeeShop 'Hot Cocoa' action and fiddled :D

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Edit Five

Applied CoffeeShop 'Green Tea' action (onto edit four) and fiddled :D

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Edit Six

Took Edit six into Lightroom, cropped differently and rotated very slightly.

A touch of extra sharpening. (Yummy!)

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Edit Seven

Took Edit six into Picnik;

 cropped (differently again) and rotated

Applied Ortonsish (faded)

Applied a very light matt vignette.

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Edit Eight

From Edit Seven I applied TriX400 curve, faded a touch and added text. 

Framed

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Edit Nine

From Eight I added a faded blue X-process curve - and liked it!

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See now, the best thing about having a great starter picture is that is takes so little to fix it up that then you can just have fun with lots of different effects and it really doesn't take too long - it's getting it on the blog that takes the time!!

I can't wait to see how everyone else has fixed this picture up

 OVER AT I ♥ FACES  FIX-IT-FRIDAY