Fix It Friday

I thought I would give this a try. I am not at all a master at the editing part of digital photography, but the more practice I get the better...right? iHeartFaces does this every Friday. They pick one image from the week and give people a chance to play with it. Here is what I came up with:

Original Image:

My Fix:

Here is what I did:

The first thing I did was use a noise reduction process from Noiseware (free download). Then, I opened it up in PSE 5.0. I cropped the image and placed the subject on the right side of the photo (using a little "rule of thirds"). I then used the Healing Brush to eliminate blemishes. I highlighted her eyes using the Dodge Tool, made her lips a bit darker using the Burn Tool (all with midtones). Then, I used the Blur Tool to make some of the edges softer. I also played with the lighting a little bit to lighten the picture and changed the saturation for a washed out appearance. Finally, I created a background layer, gave it a Gaussian Blur (thanks to my friend Tiffany teaching me how to do this a few weeks ago), and set the transparency to 25%. To complete it, I flattened the image (layers)...and this is what I ended up with. By no means am I an expert...actually this is about all I know how to do.

Lots of other people have played with this photo too! Check them out at iHeartFaces if you have a chance!