Edit Me 9 (and WINNING!)

GUESS WHAT PEOPLE!?!?

"And the winner is...

#1 - Stephanie @ Behind the Camera & Dreaming: Her editing to make it look like an old-time newspaper was Ah-Maze-Ing! Seriously out of the box and a great way to showcase the photo!"

Thanks Jen for picking me and thanks to Branson for hosting every week!

   This week's edit me challenge guest judge is Mandy from A Sorta Fairytale. This photo is of her son, Bennett. Isn't he a cutie?
While checking out A Sorta Fairytale today, I saw that Mandy is offering a free Action that she created for photoshop. So, this is not my final edit, but I thought it would be fun to use her action of her picture to try it out for the first time. It's called Vibrance and you can download it from her blog.
I didn't do any adjustments, but if I were to take it a step further I'd probably back it down to about to about 75%. It really makes the photo pop though! I will definitely try it on some other photos in the future!
 Now for the challenge. Last week I went a little crazy and had a lot of fun with creating the newspaper. So, this week I decided I would keep it simple and use real steps that I would use and explain them to you all. I use lightroom for A LOT of my editing and I never really do a step by step, so I decided I'd actually write down my steps as I do them to share.

before and after in Lightroom

 Most of the time I adjust the lighting FIRST. Using the sliding bars in Lightroom (fill light, brightness):
1. Increased the "Temp" bar to +33 (this is actually a little too warm...I realized later, but instead of going back to correct, I just did it in CS5)
Next I went to the EYES.
2. Using the Adjustment Brush just on his irises Saturation: 37, Brightness: 29, Contrast: 15, Clarity: 32
3. Select a new Adjustment Brush for brightness all over his eyes - just make sure your whites don't POP too much! (creepy)
4. Select a new Adjustment Brush and set the clarity to +51. Here I just went over his eyelashes and mouth to define the lines.
Then on to skin
5. Select a new Adjustment Brush: Clarity -61 and Sharpness +25 this creates a skin softening effect. You have to be careful here not to make it TOO blurry using the - clarity.
6. Using the contrast bar, I increased +16
7. In the color selection: I selected purple +41 Saturation to make those flowers pop a little more and Green at +14
At this point you have what you see in the before and after. I always like to compare to just see how far a photo has changed OR if I've changed it TOO much!
Next I moved the photo from lightroom over into CS5. Here I didn't do much...
1. Create a new Layer
2. Select the paint brush tool
3. Select a green from the existing grass in the photo
4. Paint GREEN all over the grassy and not so grassy areas
5. Used my eraser tool to fix any mistakes (where I MIGHT have gotten a little green in little Bennie's hair - oops)
6. select Soft Light and decrease to about 50%
I did all of this to bring out more grass or greenery in the background.
7. I then used the Simple Cool Down action by PTM because...well...as I said earlier it was a little TOO warm once I stared at it for a while.
8. Cropped to a 5x7 for optimal framing!

AND here is my final edit!

Seems like a lot of steps but it literally took me 5Xs as long to type it than to actually do them!