Posted by on Aug 20, 2010 in Fix It Friday, I Heart Faces, Photo editing tips, Photoshop Elements | 10 comments

I was all over the place with this week’s fix-it. I wanted to keep the fix soft and girly while still keeping that great punch of pink in the skirt.

1. I adjusted the photo in the RAW editor. Below are screen shots of what I did. (Because I have a Mac, I have access to the full RAW editor.)


2. After opening the photo in Elements, I duplicated the layer and used the healing brush under her eyes. I then reduced the opacity of the layer to 45%.

3. Selected the eyes and used unsharp mask (44-3.6-0).

4. Adjusted the levels, only changing the midtones. (0-1.18-255)

5. Next, I ran Pioneer Woman’s Sunshine actions and reduced the opacity to 23%.

6. To bring more of a sunny touch to the photo, I used a sunshine overlay from Patti Brown’s Kaleidoscope “The Light Set“. I used “Touch of Sun Left” twice on the photo. The first time, I covered the entire photo. The second time, I extended the layer beyond the photo. This helped position the “sun” in different places.

7. Pioneer Woman came into play again with the Warm action reduced to 31% opacity. 8. I used Unsharp Mask on the entire photo (50-1.4-0). 9. I used the dodge tool set on midtones slightly around the edges to give a softer look. The photo now looked like this:

10. At this point, I cropped in on her face just for a different look.

11. I took the photo back to landscape mode. Because of all the grass, the photo seemed very green. I wanted to see what it would look like if I removed the green. I used a hue adjustment layer, chose green from the dropdown menu, used the dropper tool on a piece of grass, and removed the color. I love how the girl instantly became the focus.

12. I was in an editing mood, so I kept going. :) Over the previous photo, I used the FloraBella action “Milk & Honey” reduced to 57% opacity. (Love, love this action!)

13. To create an even more whimsical look, I went back to my layer of light (left) and brought it into the photo again.

14. I added a really light pink filter to the photo. Just for the fun of it, I also added a photo mask to soften the edges.