Welcome to the 37th 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 “Teen or Adult Portrait” 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.

Each Thursday, I will take my SOOC shot and provide a simple/basic or advanced Photoshop/Photoshop Elements or Lightroom tutorial. You can then try my tutorial on your own photos and link up here – linky will now open EARLY on Thursdays and be open THROUGH SUNDAY. 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! Also, it does not matter what editing program you use. Although I tend to work within Adobe CS5 (Photoshop), Photoshop Elements, Adobe Camera Raw and now Lightroom…it does not mean that you have to use the exact same program. I hope you’ll be able to take the concepts and apply them in the program you feel most comfortable using.

In Week 23, we talked about non-destructive dodging and burning. Going into my edit, I thought I would review dodging and burning for Lightroom…and we will. However, the adjustment brushes in Lightroom make it so easy to selectively adjust exposure, brightness, contrast, saturation, clarity, sharpness, color, skin softening, teeth whitening, etc…so why just stop at dodging and burning. But before I get ahead of myself, here’s my SOOC shots again:

Actually, let’s start with one at a time. The above shot was a bit underexposed so it required some clean up work…you know – adjust exposure, brightness, etc. From there, I watched a video on using adjustment brushes. This particular one is on softening skin, but the concept for using adjustment brushes is roughly the same.

Although I am not nearly as confident working with adjustment brushes in Lightroom as I am with my adjustment layers in Photoshop, it is fairly easy to work with. The image you see below is after my initial processing steps but before I do any dodging/burning. Mouse over to see my photo after using the adjustment brushes.

Jill will remind me that once I get fully comfortable in Lightroom, I won’t need to move over to Photoshop…but I love it so much. So, I moved over to Photoshop and did a little more work – less about correcting my image, more about creating style. Here’s my final image.

And just in case you don’t feel like scrolling up, here’s a final look at the SOOC shot and my final edit. What do you think?

Moving on…here’s my second SOOC shot. This photo was underexposed as well. Ideally, he would have been facing the light, but I really wanted to capture Tower Bridge in the background.

Much like my previous photo, I made some initial adjustments and then used went to the adjustment panel. Here’s a look at the Before and After in Lightroom.

Once I was satisfied in Lightroom, I exported to Photoshop. It’s not the best shot, but it looks pretty decent (I have another photo that I shared last week I like a lot better).

So, to recap our lesson, today we discussed using adjustment brushes in Lightroom. If you missed the previous lesson on dodging and burning in Photoshop, click HERE. Here’s a final look at my SOOC and Final edit for my second shot.

For your edit, I would love to see you continuing using the lessons we’ve covered in the past 36 weeks as well as apply today’s lesson or share something you’ve learned recently. I hope you all have a great Thursday and I look forward to seeing your edits. Next week’s theme is “Fall” Have a great Thursday!

By the way, don’t 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.