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

It's Fix-it Friday over at I ♥ Faces! This is the first time I've done one of their challenges...but hey, I love me some Photoshop practise!

This is the "before" picture they put up:


And here's my edited version:


It also looks beautiful in black & white:


What I did:

1) Cropped to a square
2)Used Image > Adjust > shadows/highlight to lighten the shadow on her face
3)Pioneer Woman's 'Warmer' action
4)Used the Clone and Spot Healing brush tools to fix the imperfections in her face and even out the colour
5)Lightened and sharpened the eyes
6)Pioneer Woman's soft & faded action at 30% with some tweaking off inner layers
7)Burned the edges
8)Filter > Noise reduction

And then for the b & w I added Pioneer Woman's B&W Beauty with bump at 40%

All in PS3.

Making a photo work

Since I got my DSLR, I've started noticing that I have a tendency to overexpose my pictures. I don't know why; maybe they just look prettier on the little LCD screen that way. But when I get to my computer I discover excessively bright, flat colours, with all the texture gone, and blown-out whites. And this is really stupid of me because I know that it's easier to recover information from an underexposed photo than an overexposed one. My understanding is that once the light colours have blown out, they're gone for good, whereas if the darks are too dark, it's easier to "lift" them out (within reason). Anyway, I'm learning not to do it!

A friend of mine gave me some wedding photos her husband took on Our Day, some of which were completely overexposed. I tried and tried, but I couldn't rescue that glaring white blob that was my dress. If someone knows of a way to do this (she said hopefully), let me know!

So I decided if I wanted to "rescue" the photo and make it work at least a little, I'd have to try other methods. Not that this was actually necessary, you understand. I don't need this photo; I have lots of pictures of our cake cutting. But I had to try just for my own education :-)

Here's the original photo as I got it:


See how the white in my dress and veil, as well as the tablecloth (hello gorgeous not-blown-out damask runners!) are completely blown out? My arms aren't doing too well either, and neither is the cake, but I don't care about the latter. The less I see of that wreck the better; and besides, a cake doesn't really have texture so it's less noticeable that it's blown out.

My first job, I decided, was to crop as much of that awful white out of the photo as possible. Most of the bottom part of the table cloth could go, and so could the back of my dress and veil. And, of course, we had to get rid of that pesky arm on the left hand side!

After the crop:

Then I had to try get as much as possible of the detail back into the white. I pushed down the contrast and the brightness:


Yeah...not too much help, but I did get the photo crisper and less washed-out-looking, and I got a teeny-tiny bit of detail back in my hair! Hooray for small things, I suppose.

Next up I decided to make the photo sepia, using Pioneer Woman's sepia action. I just thought the blown-out veil and dress would be less garish. Here's the sepia:


What's great about this particular action is that it runs as a layer mask automatically. I've just recently been introduced to the awesomeness of layer masks by the very same Pioneer Woman's blog. Her explanations of Photoshop are awesome and so easy to understand. Anyway, a layer mask is basically...well, imagine you laid a transparency over your original picture. In this case the transparency was sepia-tinted, so it made the picture look sepia. But the original picture is still untouched, in colour, underneath. So if we erase bits of the mask, it will show the colour beneath. This was probably entirely unnecessary, but I wanted to practise doing this, and since I love my Corpse Bride cake toppers so much I decided to take them back to colour. I suppose this does make them more of a focal point than, say, my overly white veil. So good.


Since most of the white nastiness was at the edge of the photo, I decided to run an edge burn. This toned in well with the olde-worldy look of the sepia, and covered up a lot of the blowout:

And, finally, I used another of Pioneer Woman's actions, Soft and Faded, to bring in just a bit more warmth and vintage softness:


And there you have it! It's not a photo that's particularly nice, but at least I can live with it now, whereas before I would run away and hide my eyes behind a dark pillow.

BEFORE vs AFTER:


If this HAD been the only photo I had of my cake-cutting, I think I "saved" it passably...