I’m sure you’ve all figured out by now that I’m not your typical fixer. I rarely fix a photo to be technically correct. (I think this is mostly due to the fact that I’m not a professional photographer and therefore have never experienced pleasing clients).
So I like to have fun with my tones and exposure, and I don’t pay much attention to the “rules: … i.e., blown highlights, shadows, etc.
For this adorable little man, I decided to focus on his eyes (focus? get it? har-har) … that blue is magic, and I wanted to make them pop.
original image
Using Lightroom
First thing I did was crop the other fella out of the image and put this little guy in the magic “third” of the shot.
Then, I applied a preset called “Simply Crossed” from one of our awesome sponsors – Photo Flavors.
While I really liked the tones, I thought it was too washed out, so I went and reset the tone curve, bumped up the exposure just a touch and turned down the blacks.
Then, I exported into Photoshop Elements 5.0 …
Using Photoshop Elements 5.0
I wanted to sharpen the eyes a little bit, so I used the “sharpen” tool with the strength set at 80%.
I also needed to fix the collar where the dark red color had lightened in the LR editing process, so I used the “clone stamp tool” to do that.
In the end, I thought the LR Preset made his skin tone a little unnatural, so I added a fill layer with dark orange [#ee661b], changed the blending mode to “soft light” and set the opacity to 15%.
Keli is mama to a beautiful 3-year old girl with another girl on the way and blogs about her life in suburbia {almost} daily at Kidnapped by Suburbia.
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