Welcome to the 29th week of Shoot and Edit: Part 2. Click HERE for all the details and upcoming prompts/themes (also including previous editing tutorials). This week’s theme or prompt was to show us one “Laughter” SOOC shot (this was just a suggestion, you can show us any SOOC shot). Hopefully you linked up with Jill’s blog earlier this week.

Typically, each Thursday, I take my SOOC shot and provide a simple/basic or advanced Photoshop/Photoshop Elements tutorial. This week Caroline, of the Frog-Photoblog, will walk us through some simple processing tips in Lightroom!

Don’t have Lightroom? While I’m taking a (brief) break from Photoshop and Photoshop Elements tutorials, I encourage you to go back into our good to WOW tutorials or visit Amanda at Everyday Elements to continue developing your processing/editing skills (Amanda posted a really good one yesterday on creating vignettes). If you’d prefer, can simply share your own edit and show us what you did to achieve the look. We want this challenge to be a learning experience, so feel free to teach us something new too! 

This week, I have decided NOT to edit my own photo. If you checked into Ramblings and Photos yesterday, you saw that I offered my photo of Casey up for editing interpretation – if you missed it, click HERE. I can’t wait to see what you come up with. 

Instead, I decided to edit one of your photos from our good to WOW Flickr Pool. The below shot, by Mama Monkey, really jumped out at me. I love her older daughter’s expression in the background (almost evil witch like) matched by her younger daughter’s laughter in the front. Even funnier is the back story…you’ll have to click over to see her other shot.

Anyways, I decided that I would closely follow Caroline’s Lightroom Steps, starting with a closer crop to remove some of the distractions from the right side of the frame. I then used Caroline’s Bright and Light Portrait Preset. You can download all of Caroline’s presets by clicking HERE.

The one thing that this preset does not do, is adjust your white balance. I did not have the RAW file, so I went with an auto white balance adjustment on top of Caroline’s preset. I then used her Fine Sharpen preset and played around with her neat alt trick (you’ll have to click over to see what I’m talking about…very cool). I then used her STD NR preset to reduce noise, bumped up my exposure just a bit and added a vignette.

Just walking through those steps alone was a huge help in advancing my Lightroom learning curve. So, I decided to take it a step further and try applying a custom gradient. Again, be sure you check out her steps…but, I really like how the gradient warmed up the image from my clean edit. I then added a touch of fill light to brighten it up a bit and lowered the saturation just a hair. Upon a second look, it’s possible that the gradient I applied is still too pink. You get the idea. 

I wasn’t going to go any further with my color edit, but I had to see what my new Debonair action, inspired by Katie Lloyd‘s Vintage Polaroid Effect for Photoshop Elements would do for this photo. I absolutely love the vintage tones.

If you haven’t already, be sure to download Debonair by clicking on the button below. I’ve also included a comparison from SOOC to Clean to Gradient to Debonair.

Finally, I wanted to share this photo in black and white. Caroline has an incredible black and white preset called “Blue/Gold BW.” This has quickly become one of my favorites (well all of her presets are so clean and user-friendly…you absolutely have to check them out).

She shares, along with her black and white conversion, an interesting tip on syncing. This is genius way to batch edit and I’m tickled to death that she shared it with us (I’m sure I would have eventually figured it out). What do you think?

To recap our lesson…Caroline shared FIVE really cool Lightroom tips with us on HER BLOG. If you haven’t already clicked over (and you’re a Lightroom user), what are you waiting for? Thanks again Caroline – you’re the best!

For your edit, I would love to see you continuing using the lessons we’ve covered in the past 28 weeks as well as apply today’s lesson or share something you’ve learned recently. If you decided to edit my photo this week, I’m extra excited to see what you’ve done. I hope you all have a great Thursday and I look forward to seeing your edits. Next week’s theme is “Sunset.” Have a great Thursday!

By the way, dont’ forget to add your edited photo to our good to WOW {EDIT} Flickr Group (for those of you that prefer to upload and visit that way). When adding your photos to the group pool, be sure to include the Week #, the Theme and EDIT in the description section. You may upload one photo per week. I also want to point out that we are all here to improve our editing skills. When offering constructive criticism (either on Flickr or within blog comment sections), be sure to point out at least one thing you really like about the edit before offering any advice for improvement.