I liked the composition of this image, so I decided not to crop it at all. This photo was underexposed and the skin needed a lot of work.

The first thing I did was open it in ACR and increase the brightness and the exposure. Then I opened it in Photoshop CS3 and did the rest of my edits.

I adjusted the skin tones using the CMYK color by the numbers method.

Also, because this image was underexposed it was quite noisy. I ran Noiseware on it’s own layer and then decreased the opacity.

I usually like skin to look as close to natural as possible. I usually increase brightness with curves and that usually is enough to give the skin that creamy look. This photo needed a little more. I ran Powder Your Nose from MCP Actions and then brushed in in–mostly around his mouth and chin.

After that I ran Touch of Darkness/Touch of Light from MCP Actions and just darkened a bit around the edges.

That’s about it!

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I can’t believe a whole week has gone by and I only posted once since the last Fix-it Friday. I am trying to be better about posting, but I guess I didn’t do a very good job this week

Here is what I did:
1) Ran Noiseware on a new layer. Lowered opacity to 25%
2) Increased the brightness using curves
3) Corrected the color using curves
4) sharpened the eyes using MCP Action’s Eye Doctor
5) Sharpened for web
6) Rotated the photo just a bit to straighten it out
7) Cropped

Here is my final image:

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First I opened this photo in ACR. I bumped up the exposure and then used recovery to bring down some of the blown out areas on the right side of his face.

Then I opened it in Photoshop CS3. I first did a defog and then started working on the color correction. I use the CMYK method of skin tone correcting. I took a great class from Jodi at MCP Actions called Color Fixing. If you want to learn about how to color correct skin, you should definitely take her class!

Then I did a hue saturation layer to bring down some of the reds. I inverted the mask and just painted on the parts where I wanted to erase the redness.

Then I used MCP actions eye doctor to sharpen the eyes a little.

I cropped it and here is what my final results look like:

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I was going to keep track of each step as I edited this photo, but I did so much I kind of got lost!

Here is a general run down of what I did:
1)Opened the photo in ACR and increased exposure, brightness, and warmed it up a bit
2)Opened in Photoshop CS3
3)Did a defog filter>sharpen>unsharp mask amount 35% Radius 5.6 Threshold 6
3)Created a curves layer and brought up the exposure some more and added some contrast
4)Created another curves layer and used it to color correct the skin
5)Did a TON of skin editing. This needed lots of spot healing brush and patch tool work. I think the skin looks a little overdone, but it needed a ton of work.
6)Ran MCP Actions Powder your Nose and brushed it on the cheeks.
7)Ran MCP Actions Eye Doctor and sharpened just the right eye since it was a bit out of focus
8)Cropped and sharpened for web

Maybe next week I’ll do a better job and keep track of every single step

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This week’s photo was really fun to work on! It didn’t need too much correcting, so it was fun to just try to make it shine. Here is what I came up with:

By the way, I am still working on getting my photography website up and running. But in the meantime, I decided to make a facebook page for Kerry Sundahl Photography. I just posted one album on there, but I will be adding more soon. Come check it out and become a fan!

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I played around with this photo quite a bit. I think it was a bit out of my comfort zone. I’m used to editing portraits and making them look as natural as possible. I had fun playing with this one adding grain and making it look “old”. I tried a bunch of different things, but kept starting over. Here is what I finally settled on.

Then I played around with a new action I got this week. Here is my before and after:

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For this week’s photo, I didn’t think there was too much that needed to be done. I brightened it up a bit using curves, and then I adjusted the skin a bit. I thought it would be fun to try adding a texture also. Here is what I came up with:

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I don’t know how I missed last week’s Fix-it Friday, but I am back this week I really liked this photo–it was a fun one to work on.

Here is my edit:

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This was a fun photo to play around with.

First I opened the photo in Adobe Bridge. I bumped up the exposure and decreased both the color and luminance noise. If I had a noise reduction program I would have used that too. I still think this photo needs more noise reduction than what I did.

Next I opened the photo in Photoshop CS3. I used the spot healing brush and the patch tool to clean up some of the flaws in the skin and around the nose.

I ran ProRetouch from Totally Rad actions and softened the skin a bit.

I sharpened the eyes a little bit, and I was pretty happy with how the photo looked.

Then I decided to play around with it a bit more and I ran some more actions from Totally Rad Actions.

Here is Prettyizer:

Grunge Rock:

And SX-70. This is normally not my style, but I liked how it looked on this photo.

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This week’s photo was fun to work on. The little girl was so cute, and the photo didn’t need too much work. The eyes were sharp and the expression was cute. The composition needed a little bit of work, so I cropped it to make the girl the focus of the photo and to take out the distracting wall.

I opened the photo in Adobe Camera Raw. I lightened it considerably and applied some fill light. I adjusted the color and luminance noise and then opened it in PhotoShop CS3.

In Photoshop I adjusted the skin tones. I found a new way to adjust skin by called Color Correcting by the Numbers. I think it does a really good job for skin. You can see a tutorial for it here: http://www.lynda.com/home/DisplayCourse.aspx?lpk2=532. By the way, that site has some awesome Photoshop tutorials and lots of them are free.

Then I just boosted the contrast a bit and burned the edges slightly.

Here is what I came up with:

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