Each week, as part of a photography board in which I participate, we’re given a couple of photos that need a little editing help. If you’re a fan of I Heart Faces‘ “Fix-It Friday,” then you’re already familiar with the process. This week, one of the girls gave us quite the challenge. In this first one, we were asked to fix a back-lit, under-exposed photograph of an adorable little girl (her daughter).
- I adjusted the levels and s-curve to brighten the image (to be honest, I may have blown it out a little too much, but I like my photographs brighter).
- I did some light corrections on her face using Coffeeshop’s Baby Powder Room. I was careful to lower each layer’s opacity so that she still looked natural.
- I added Coffeeshop’s Golden Vintage – again adjusting each layers opacity so it wasn’t too golden or vintagy.
- I adjusted the saturation levels of my yellow, red and magenta to warm it up a bit.
- I added 2 vignettes – I’m not even sure you can really tell since I layer them so lightly that it creates a nice frame.
This second photo’s challenge was to adjust the underexposure and clean up a wrinkled background.
Here’s my recipe for this second photo:
- First, I selected the background and gave it a gaussian blur to correct a wrinkled backdrop. I suppose I could have added texture, but I kept it simple.
- Again, I adjusted the levels and s-curve to brighten the image.
- Then, I used Coffeeshop’s Baby Powder Room to clean up her face a little. As with the first photo, I was careful to adjust the opacity on each layer so she still looked natural.
- Next, I did a little dodge and burn action (made tonal adjustment, added a layer mask, revealed adjustment layer and painted the area I wanted to lighten – which in this case, was mostly the right side).
- I added Coffeeshop’s Color Pop and adjusted opacity levels (sometimes it gives too much pop).
- Finally, I added a light vignette to frame out the picture.
One of these days, I’ll include screen shots with instructions, but hopefully this gives you a little insight into how I go about editing a photograph. I’m open to constructive criticism if you have any, or if you have other approaches that I should learn – I still have a lot to learn! By the way, if you want to see larger images of either set, just click on the picture – it won’t be the best resolution since I’ve uploaded it using blogger, but you get the idea.
Until next time,
