I heart faces ::fix it Friday::

I love "fixing" photos. It's an art in itself. Don't get me wrong...capturing beautiful photos requires a lot of practice and knowing how to use your camera and I don't think that "fixing photos" should be used as the only way for you to get good looking photos. I think I enjoy fixing photos because I get the chance to enhance it in a way that your camera just can't do. I heart faces hosts a Fix It Friday challenge every week and this week I just couldn't resist. The photo reminded me of warm weather that I am desperately missing!! It gave me a chance to use some of my overlays in the store, too!!!

Here's the before:

The contributor writes: "My daughter is standing in our front garden - I was laying down. It was a beautiful day, but her face was in full shade & looks a bit blurry. She looks too dull against the blue sky. I'd like to be able to pull the whole thing up and make her pop out without losing the beauty of that blue sky."


And here's my play:

Here's how I did it:
Step 1: I duplicated the layer of the photo to begin my play. I ALWAYS do this so that if I don't like my play, I can easily just delete the layer and start over. I then bumped the curves up so that her face's exposure was fixed.


Step 2: This made the rest of the photo over-exposed so I used my eraser tool to erase back all of that new layer, except for the face. Then I flattened the image.



Step 3: I really like the composistion of this photo but I wanted to try something else so that I could use my Sun Flares (you'll see later what I mean). I adjusted the composition by making the photo a layer..do this by double clicking on the flattened image in the layers palette. A window will pop up that says "New Layer." Name your layer and then click OK. To rotate the image, go to Edit>Free Transform (or Ctrl+T for PC users). I rotated it to my liking and then moved the layer over closer to the right side of the frame. In order to get rid of the "empty space" from rotating the layer, I increased the size of the layer to fill that space. There was still a little space left over in the corners, so I used my clone tool to fill in the rest.



Step 4: Finally, I used my Celebrating Color Overlays and my Sun Flare Overlays to add some playful color and sun flares off to the side of the face (to mimic the sun coming in from that direction since the photo is seems like that's where the direction of the light is coming from). To find out how to use these overlays, check out my blog post HERE. IF you still have questions on how to use them, feel free to email me at: sanfleo [at] cableone [dot] net





Go to I heart Faces to play with this fun photo!! :) There are no "winners" because it's just for fun and to learn from each other...however, it has prompted me to start a new feature here on my blog, so be sure to check back soon!!! :)

Leora