FIX-IT-FRIDAY - NO.54- "Over-Exposure"

Original

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Edit One

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Edit Two

This week's fix was a challenge!


The photo was submitted to iheartfaces by Christina from 3 Sweet P's. She wrote: "This is a photo of my 2 year-old Parker. I am bothered by the harsh shadow on his face and the washed out colors of the photo. His eyes are a beautiful blue and you just can't see that. I would love to see what you guys can come up with!"


It took some work to soften that area of over exposure on the right of his face and then I wanted to bring back the blue of his eyes a bit too. The colours needed to punch more, without accentuating the harsh lines of sunlight on his face ~ wow ~ tall order!


Firstly I opened the photo in PSE7 camera raw and fiddled a little with overall exposure and contrast and then opened the image.
Always duplicating layers before I worked this is what I did (I think!)

• Selected the over exposed area of his face and layered as a cut
• colour picked from a good skin tone and then bucket filled the selection
• Decreased the opacity of the selection to blend it down.
• (It looked a little better)
• applied Coffeeshop Johnna's Tea Party and reduced the opacity of the layers
• flattened and duplicated the image
• I transformed the duplicated image to BW and then layered it back on top of the original ~ setting to Soft light and decreasing opacity to taste ~ this punches the colours nicely!
• I then used Coffeeshop Perfect Portrait action and worked with appropriate layers ~ especially the dodge layer to further soften the harshness of the line on his face.
• I reapplied Johnna's Tea Party, deleted the middle layer and reduced opacity of top layer (I liked the tones this gave) ~ flattened
• Created a new layer and flooded with a light beige tone ~ this improved the skin tones ~ flattened
• Lassoed his eyes and created a seperate layer for them, then played with the hue enhancement to make them blue again.
• faded the layer down until they looked natural.
• Saved for the web.  ~ Voila Edit One

For Edit two I worked straight of Edit one and applied 'Nelly Nero Grunge BW' and just fiddled with the layers until I liked the look!

I think I prefer Edit one overall, although it is a little more yellow than I would really like it to be.

For more fantastic edits of this picture head on over to Fix-It-Friday :)