Oh my goodness! Could this little boy get any cuter? I love the direct eye contact he gave the photographer.
Here’s what I did to fix up the photo:
1. Adjusted in the RAW editor – mainly adjusted exposure, added yellow in the white balance and upped the clarity
2. Ran Noiseware very lightly within Elements
3. Selected the green on the left, copied it to the right and then used the healing brush to get rid of the seams.
4. Selected the eyes and duplicated into a new layer – Used unsharp mask at 100 – 2.8 – 0. This made the eyes pretty sharp, and I was afraid that any further sharpening I did would make the eyes look fake. I decided to reduce the opacity of the sharpened layer to 60%.
5. Adjusted levels – 5*1.14*249
6. I flattened all the layers and then duplicated the layer. I used the healing brush under the eyes and along the ruddy parts of the cheek. I then reduced the opacity of the top layer to 38%…enough to bring in the bottom layer and keep some of the natural texture of the skin.
7. Many times when I sharpen a photo, the hair gets jagged-looking. To avoid this, I selected only the face (no hair) and sharpened the photo. I used the Unsharp Mask settings 5-250-0 and then used Unsharp Mask again at 50-1.4-0
8. Cropped to a square leaving green space on the right…
9. I then added the “fluff”. The quote used was from Steven Curtis Chapman’s song Fingerprints of God. I used the song recently in a VBS video, so it was fresh in my memory. 
10. Fonts used: Handwriting-Dakota (comes with a Mac?) and karabinE.
11. Frame made with an action from GraffiShop.
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So very cute!
I don’t think I’ve ever done step 3, but I want to give it a try. I’m just a little unsure of how to do that! I’ve been using PSE 5 for several years. Hmmm… off to play. Any insight into the how would be great. ??
Thanks, Rebecca. To see how I work with eyes, check out the following link: http://iheartfaces.blogspot.com/2009/07/making-eyes-pop-in-photoshop-elements.html
There is a video in the post that shows how to duplicate the eyes into a new layer, sharpen them, etc.
Happy editing!
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This is so understandable! Thanks for being specific. I live that you used elements and not a lot of actions since that is what I have. I have to learn how to do step 4…maybe I will play around with that today.
Of course the results are lovely too!
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