Wow, this was a hard one. I’m still not entirely happy with it. I just upgraded to Photoshop CS4 so I am still learning my way around. I am also missing some of my presets and actions. But, here you go anyway

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I decided to get a little more creative with this photo. I did my normal adjustments: increased brightness with curves, adjusted the skin tones, cloned out a few hot spots on her face. Then I played around with cropping, but I couldn’t come up with anything I liked.

I liked the brightness of this image and how the sun was shining. I decided to apply a texture to enhance that look. I think it turned out pretty fun.

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This week’s photo was technically good. It was a bit dark, but it was nice and sharp. Mostly, the skin needed work.

I first opened this photo in ACR. I actually lessened the exposure, because I didn’t want the big white spot on the right to be so bright. I figured I’d brighten the exposure with curves so that I could mask off the background area to keep it darker.

Then I went to Photoshop CS3 and brightened with curves. I masked off the background.

I did some color correction with curves and the color-by-the-numbers method.

Then I went to work on the skin. I used the spot healing brush and the patch tool quite a bit.

Last I used MCP Actions Powder your nose at a very low opacity.

This is what I came up with:

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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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