new cat behavior

It's another "Fix it Friday" over at I Heart Faces!

This time it was a real challenge with bright highlights and some focus issues to try to correct.

Here is the original by Keli Hoskins.


I tried to keep detailed notes about all the steps that I took in Lightroom 2 and Photoshop CS3.  Although when I was trying to get the exposure on the face right I did a bit of that without writing down exactly... so it's a little bit approximate when it comes to that area of the photo.

The photo started off in Lightroom. 

My first edit:


I cropped a bit to remove the walkway lamp, upped the temperature to 5333 and changed the tint to 14.
I pushed the recovery slider to 100, and brought the brightness down to 46.
I upped the saturation to 19,  luminance to 26 and blacks to 10.

Here's where I started fussing with the adjustment brush on "exposure".  On the bright edge of the face, the hat and the foot I did a layer set at -.25.  On the brightest edge of the chair I did a layer set at -1.  Then I brightened the entire face with a layer at +.2.  It didn't seem to be enough so I did another layer on all of the face except the brightest edge at +.4.

At this point I duplicated the photo so I could do another edit, then opened this edit in Photoshop.  I duplicated the layer I ran a "high pass" filter on the top layer, set it's mode as "overlay", then erased everything except the face and the center of the hat (the outer edges of the hat I erased to give it a more gradual sharpening effect.  That way the face is sharpened, but not the rest of the photo.

Then I added a subtle vignette (I will do a tutorial post on that soon), and a little blur tool on the cheeks to soften them. 

My second edit:



This was a duplicate of my first edit after I fixed the highlight problem in the face.
I cropped closer to focus on the face and hands.  (Do you see those adorable drool bubbles?)
I played a little bit with the levels of the colors under the "grayscale" menu in Lightroom.
I also upped the contrast to 30. 
Then I brought the photo into Photoshop, did the same sharpening, blurring and vignette.

That was fun!  And I think I was actually pretty successful with evening out the highlights on the face!

-----------------------------------

Now for an update -- I've been making slow but steady progress on the most beautiful chair.  But now I have to wait for some supplies to come in the mail.  Darn, I hate waiting!  But I'm so excited to finally finish it (and post the step by step)!

I'm participating again in the I Heart Faces Fix it Friday (their #82, my second).  It's fun to have someone else's photo to edit for a change, although their photos never seem to need much changing! :)

Here is the original (by Rachel Durik):



Both of my edits I did in Adobe Lightroom 2.



I felt it was a little too heavy on the negative space on the right. If there was a little bit on the left I think it would have felt more balanced. So, I cropped out a lot of it. Then I warmed it a bit, upped the exposure, upped the saturation just a touch, and sharpened the eyes. (Ok, so the eyes were already sharp, I just wanted to try out the adjustment brush in Lightroom!)



For the second edit I cropped close in on the girls face (love those freckles!). Then I ran a preset called "Matt's Vintage Style" (he also has one that adds grain to the image). I thought it was a bit too green for this photo so I moved the tint more to the magenta side. I upped the exposure, sharpened the eyes and added just a hint of an edge burn.

So much fun!

Ooo, by the way, I'm going to have a couple projects featured tomorrow (Saturday) morning at the DIY Showoff!  Yay!

Plus, when I get to 100 followers I'm going to do a giveaway and start my own linky party (with a catch).  Woohoo!

You can go from a decent snapshot....  to a wow piece.


With very little time and effort. 

Okay, maybe I'm a little biased (this is my daughter), but I love it!

This was done with both Adobe Lightroom (cropped, applied "antique" preset, adjusted light/dark balance) and Adobe Photoshop (used heal and clone tool to remove brownie remains and stray strand of hair).