Meet Olivia. When I sent out a request for an editing challenge, Olivia’s mom was quick to respond. I then found out that she’s also from North Carolina…and she grew up close to my husband – small world!
To be honest, this is actually a great example of a typical mommy shot, but she’s done a few things really well…making it a great candidate for a Before & After.
- Exposure is looking pretty good
- Olivia’s expression is priceless.
- Eyes are in focus!
A lot of people ask “how do you decide which photos to process?” Well, I’m no pro, but it starts with exposure and focus. Here’s the Before & After…
…and here are my steps in PSE: - Made a mild curves adjustment.
- Ran Squeaky Clean to clean up the photo.
- Ran Coffeeshop’s Baby Powder Room on low opacities to give her a soft look.
- Ran Pioneer Woman’s Bring Out the Eyes action.
- Used the healing tool to get rid of some of the stray hairs.
- Saved all my edits up to this point, renamed Clean Version.
- Applied Johnna LaFaith’s Faded Morning action.
- On the cream color-filled layer, I painted the color off her eyes with a soft black brush.
- Applied a linen texture (laid it right on top of photo) and set it to overlay, opacity at 25%.
- I painted the texture off of her face.
- Oh, I forgot to add that I did crop and stretched the right side of the photo to fill in the empty space.
So, that’s how I took a cute mommy shot and turned it into what I believe is portrait material…and anyone can recreate it! There’s more to come, stay tuned.
