I ♥ Faces Fix-it Friday

I missed last week but I did it anyway, at the same time I did this week's! Here they are:

 

and

 

I ♥ Faces Fix-it Friday

I have to admit, I really struggled with this one. The lighting in the original was so bad that I practically had to paint half of her skin back on, and I can never make that look 100% natural. See what I mean:

The left side of the picture is completely blown out, and the right side completely underexposed. I immediately knew that the only way this photo could work would be to make it monochrome, so that the colours of the lightened shadows on the little girl's arms and back couldn't be seen. I also had to soften this area a lot.

This is what I came up with:

I have to admit, I'm not blown away by it, but it's better. I hate oversoftening that results in images looking like they were taken through gauze, so I tried not to go that far! 

And I can't list what I did, because in the end I think I used about thirty different actions on this one, not to mention all the cloning for the skin! The major thing is that I made it B&W, warmed it up with a little cinnamon toast from TRA, and softened using Super Fun Happy and something else, painting back the bits I didn't want soft, and then added contrast, painting back the bits I needed to keep soft! Oy.

I ♥ Faces Fix-it Friday

Another one!

Here's the before. Not too much wrong with it, right?

 

But look what you can do!

or

I was going to keep him in colour because of his beautiful blues, but when I tried the B & w (with cinnamon) he just looked adorable too! Children look so gorgeous in black & white.

The main thing I had to do on the original photo was even out the shadows on his face using the clone tool. Then I lightened, warmed, sharpened, made it contrasty, and voila.

I ♥ Faces Fix-it Friday

Oh, it's Friday again. This one was an interesting challenge - trying to rescue a completely underexposed photo without making it look terrible.



The problem with underexposed photos is when you lighten them they become very grainy and very reddish in tone. After I'd cropped and lightened this picture I opened the colour channel and moved the red options way across to blue and cyan. I also increased the yellow a little. Then I used Pioneer Woman's "Soft and Faded" action to get the little guy a bit less noisy and more soft, and then I used TRA's "Super Fun Happy" to make him even softer. Usually I don't much like the effect of Super Fun Happy, but I think in this case it worked!

I ♥ Faces Fix-it Friday

Yeah, um, I totally forgot to post this on Friday. Probably because I was ranting on about surrogacy :-)

So here is last week's Fix-it Friday from I ♥ Faces:

Before:


When I looked at this picture I decided two things. Firstly, her hands were way too distracting because they were becoming the focal point of the picture, and secondly, I wanted to draw attention to her cute freckles and red hair. This is what I came up with:


I really like the little light rainbow that fell across her hair!

I ♥ Faces Fix-it Friday

It just keeps rollin' around every week!

You might have noticed that I love making photos of children black and white. And this week is no exception.

Original:


Now the problem with this photo is it's a little too dark, but lightening it brings up all the noise in the underexposed areas. Which makes it PERFECT for black & white, because it never shows up as badly then. Good thing I wanted to do b & w anyway.


I lightened just a little. Then I ran TRA's Bitchin' B & W, then ran Oh Snap! over that. I added Antique tone at around 30%. Then I used pro retouch to soften his face and brighten his eyes. Et voila!

Oh I also cropped the tiniest bit, but you can see that.

No go to I ♥ Faces and see what everyone else did.

I ♥ Faces Fix-it Friday

I swore I wasn't going to go a week without blogging, and yet here I am again. I've been really busy editing and rehearsing this week, though (yeah yeah, excuses excuses). :-)

Here is this week's Fix it Friday Entry.
BEFORE:


AFTER:
Because I did this yesterday I can't entirely remember what I did. I know I lightened and increased the contrast with something like TRA's Oh Snap! action, and then ran the boring selenium tone over it. Um, yeah, something or other like that. Obviously I fixed skin imperfections, sharpened the eyes, and cropped too.

This was a great picture, actually! A really expressive face. Nice.

I ♥ Faces Fix-it Friday

I loved this week! I love really having to FIX a problem photo, rather than just playing around at improving an already good one. This week's little boy has a skin condition on his face, so I set to work to clear that up!

Here's the original:


And my fix:

It's still not perfect, but it's a start.

First, I cropped the image. I decided to keep it in colour because I didn't want to waste those beautiful blue eyes on black & white! Then I went around with the spot healing brush. Anywhere there was flaking white skin or little red bumps, I took them out. Once that was done, I was still left with a lot of red texture around his mouth and cheek, so I made a copy of the layer, then applied gaussian blur to the bottom one. I made the top one a layer mask, and then just painted over the bits where I wanted the gaussian blur to show through.

So now I was left with a smoother face, but still very red. I made another layer copy (I flattened the last two first) and adjusted the red balance on it till the red areas looked normal. This left the rest of the picture very blue, but that's okay, because I just made that top layer into a layer mask again and painted off the blue I didn't want. Flatten again.

I used the clone brush at 20% opacity to paint over areas on his face that still looked uneven. This is a long process! Then I sharpened his eyes and applied a warm layer. The End.

I ♥ Faces Fix-it Friday

It's that time again...yesterday :-)

Here's the original pic:


They wanted a more 'vintage' look to tie in with the little girl's outfit. This is what I came up with:

Problem is, I tried so many different things that I can't remember what I did! I'm fairly sure in the end I used Pioneer Woman's Heartland action but adjusted some of the layers so that it was less washed out. I darkened it with a darkening/dim the lights kind of action, and sharpened. I think I might have added a warm layer as well. Then I did an edge burn. I think!

I ♥ Faces Fix-it Friday

I was at a photography workshop over the weekend (more on that later), so I didn't get a chance to do the I ♥ Faces weekly fix-it challenge until today!

Here's the original:

And my fix:

I'm not crazy about it, to be honest, but at least it's better than it was before.

I ♥ Faces Fix-it Friday

Another one!

Here's today's original picture from I ♥ Faces.



And my fix:


Yet again, there wasn't much wrong with this picture except that it was a little too "cold", so I just warmed it up a bunch, smoothed out the little girl's skin where it had marks by the eyebrows and on her left cheek, and cropped it. Oh, and I sharpened and lightened her eyes. Sweet and simple!

I ♥ Faces Fix-it Friday

Ah, it rolls around so quickly. Seems like just yesterday I was posting last week's entry...

Here is today's original picture from I ♥ Faces.

Actually, I think there's very little wrong with this picture. It's beautifully exposed and clear, and there are no weird shadows or sunny spots anywhere. I subscribe to the "if it ain't broke" school of photoshop; that is, since this picture is so lovely I'm not going to mess with it too much and do all sorts of weird effects and softness and odd things. I did, however, decide that I needed to get in closer on his face, so I cropped in a bit, and then I decided that his expression and big eyes would be best served by making the photo black & white. Babies and amall children look gorgeous in black & white, in my opinion. Before I converted it I lightened and sharpened his eyes, just to bring them out. And voila:


Such a sweet, beautiful boy.

I ♥ Faces Fix-it Friday

I realised I forgot to post my entry from last week's Fix-it Friday at I ♥ Faces! So here you go.

This was the original picture:


And here's my version:

There wasn't much wrong with this sweet photo. I cropped it a little to make the focus more on the little girl than the background, used the clone tool to fix up the shadows on her face, and used Pioneer Woman's soft and faded on her at 25%, with the desaturated layer down to 0%. I also sharpened her eyes, lips and nose edges, as well as her hairband. The End!

I ♥ Faces Pet Photo Challenge

The competition this week at I ♥ Faces is Pets. And, of course, I have a gazillion pictures of my sweet little terror, Gollum. Who else am I going to practise taking photos of? So here's my entry:


Isn't he just darling? I also made one with the caption "Do Not Want." You sci-fi/Star Wars geeks will know where that's from. :-)