Fix It Friday

Okay, folks! Y'all seemed to enjoy last week's Fix It Friday post so I thought I'd do another one this week. Click here to get directions on how to do it yourself and to see other people's versions! The photo was not taken by me, I merely edited the original photo to my liking. I'll try to breakdown how I edited it (if I can remember) but before we do that, let's get a glimpse at the before:

One thing I do every time to the pictures is adjust the levels and curves. This makes the photo lighter, and brings out the brightness in the picture so it's not as shady. Next I added MCP Magic Skin action, which smooths her skin out just a tad and takes out blemishes and such. The key to this is to do it really lightly, so that they don't look plastic. If you look closely at the before photo, you might notice some blotchy skin on her chest/cheeks. Once you see the after, you'll notice that that color variation isn't there and that her skin looks silky smooth.

Next, I upped the vibrance to make her gorgeous red hair POP! The pink dress and green grass got a little more color to them as well, which I loved. After that, I played around with a few various actions to get the desired look. Finally, I landed on No Ordinary Slumber from the Taste of Pure actions found here. It's one of my favs and I've been using it a lot. Of course, I always adjust the settings once it's on there, like taking the vintage tones down a bit, etc. 

Finally, I did a quick crop, added my edited by bit, and wallah! There you have it. Here's the after:

And, of course, a little side-by-side action :)

I always like to do a black and white version too (just for fun). To do that, I just took the edited color version and went from there. First thing I did was desaturate the image. That way, I can add some warmth back in afterwards (which I like to do). So yeah, don't do greyscale. Bad.

Once you desaturate, the color has very little contrast, so I go back to my levels and curves and readjust them to get darker darks and lighter lights. Then I sharpened the photo to give the grass and her face a little definition, added a 10% warmth layer, and there you have it. Black and white version:

Okay, folks. There you have it. Hope you learned something? Most of you probably have no clue what I even said. That's okay. Hah!

Happy Friday!!