Southern Composition

                                 ORIGINAL                                                    MY EDIT

I recently found this great website- I Heart Faces- that offers some great tutorials and tips for photoshop as well as hosting weekly "fix-it-friday" events. Basically for fix-it-friday they let users download an un-edited image of theirs and try their hand and fixing it up in post processing. You then post a link to your edits on their website & see what others did with the same image.

 It really help keep the juices going & is a great way to get some practice in on editing portraits (not really my strong point!). My big discovery with this editing? High pass filters on eyes look amazing ONLY when the blend mode is set to color dodge (and only the colored part of the eye is selected). 

- Opened in Camera RAW & added Strong S Curve- opened in Photoshop

-LAYER 1:  Background Copy- used smudge tool to soften hair and skin blemishes (w layer mask over skin fixes)

- LAYER 2: Background Copy of Layer 1- disabled layer mask over skin fixes, adjusted opacity to 68% & fill to 57%

- LAYER 3: Background Copy- blur filter applied to gray background only

- LAYER 4: layer via copy (only eyes selected)- high pass filter, blend mode color dodge, added brightness/contrast adjustment layer (32 Brightness, 27 Contrast)

- LAYER 5: color fill layer (orange/sepia tone), blend mode overlay, adjusted opacity to 43%

- LAYER 6: applied red photo filter at 35% density, then layer mask to show only red areas of image (candy & shirt)

- LAYER 7: The Pioneer Woman action Quick Edge Burn, blend mode linear burn, at 65% opacity