Fix-it Friday

I am still on vacation and doing lots of fun stuff, but I really wanted to participate in the i heart faces Fix-it Friday party. I am going to try to do as many of these as I can this (school) year because it is clear to me that when I take a break from Photoshop, I get a little "rusty".



Here is the original photo (not taken by me):

and here is my edit:

Following is a loose run-down of what I did:

1) cropped
2) very slight light/contrast adjust
3) I ran the Coffee Shop Baby Powder Room action on it and used only the skin glow, eye bright and a very light eye define layer. I was very tempted to do more redness removal, but I am trying to keep from overworking pictures, especially of children. I want the picture to still look like the model when I get finished with it. ;)
4) popped the saturation a little bit.
5) Then I ran the Ice Pop action from Coffee Shop because I just got it and I am kind of in love with it. I adjusted each layer to a low opacity and did not even use one of them.
6) I then created a solid overlay in a sort of goldy-yellow color to give him a warm glow and set that to about 50% opacity.
7) I hand-painted a bright blue over his irises with about a 20% opacity and set it to a darken mode. I did this after playing around to see what I liked best. I wanted the color to pop without turning him into an alien. I resisted the urge to dodge his catch-lights for the same reason.



That's it! This was a pretty quick edit, all in all. Of course, I love to play so I thought about adding a texture too, but we are on our way to the pool now. :)


Please check out the other contributors at i heart faces. I will be by later today to see what some of the others came up with.