Friday, so it is time to edit a picture given to us at I Heart Faces. This week was a good one, a challenge. This image had some serious White Balance issues and a few color casts to get rid of.
Below is the SOOC image they gave us and then my final entry. All edits made in PSE 9. I did a few other plays I will share further down.
For those interested, here is roughly what I did:
- Levels adjustment, grabbed gray dropper and found a neutral spot and clicked. Took a few times to get the WB I wanted.
- Hue/Saturation adjustments, a few of them. Lassoed the areas that needed help, opened the Hue/Sat, pulled the hue slider to left or right, then tweaked the reds and/or yellow also.
- Levels adjustment, sliding black slider over a bit, then moving the midtones (gray slider) to the left a tiny bit.
- Smoothed the skin with a Gaussian blur filter, inverted and brushed only on the skin.
- Minimized the shadow area by using the Marquee tool, then the Free Transform to drag out and up/down. Added a mask and used a hard brush to brush off of the shorts or shirt.
- After saving the clean edit, I cropped and ran a few actions.
Here are my four plays. The actions were run AFTER the image had been given a clean edit.
If you like the four rounded spots template, you can download it HERE. It is sized for Facebook (only 700 pixels wide) and if your blog post area is smaller than that, simply insert your images, use clipping masks, flatten, then resize the image to fit your blog.
You can also change the color of the background or insert digital papers or textures to use as a background instead. To do that, just insert the paper/texture right on top of the background, before the clipping mask shapes.
Almost forgot! If you like the Sumter action, you can get it free by subscribing to my monthly newsletter.
About Amanda
I love the tones of your Sumter action on this photo. And thanks for the freebie! I love that I can use some of my digital papers as the background…fun!
Fanstastic edits! Love the pheonix!!
Love your edits!
Oh, I love that Georgie action, too!
Why or why am I always the odd one out – I actually like the SOOC shot best. A bit dark maybe, but I love the warm glow. Can I assume it was taken at sunset or sunrise. That is what makes the shot – all the edits seem to have taken out the warmth – and left the sand feeling cold. Sorry just my opinion.
Lorraine, I appreciate your opinion. Editing it certainly a personal preference. My sister much prefers darker images, and complains that everyones pictures are too bright. LOL
I like warm (and cool) shots, but I felt, and so did the majority of those who played with this shot, that the sunset light was just too warm, too orange.
Actually what I did was fixed the White Balance and that was what took the majority of the warmth out of the SOOC image. If you test the skin areas of my Phoenix and Sumter plays, the skin is still really warm, in terms of Red, Green, Blue values.