I Heart Faces: Fix it Friday #60

It’s Fix-It-Friday! I was so excited when I saw this week’s wonderful capture by Susan Keller of her teenage son.

I instantly knew that we’d get a lot of diverse, creative results in editing this one! This is my 4th week participating in Fix-it-Friday and for each, I’ve gone around looking at most of the entries. With some of the pictures, people tend to go in similar directions and it can get boring by the time I get to the 60th link (sorry guys, it’s not you!) I can’t wait to see what everyone else does with this one!

But first, I have some exciting news and opportunities!

Yesterday I signed up for Faith Raider’s Simplicity Summer Photography eClass! It starts July 5, runs 4 weeks and costs only $20! Registration closes June 27, so it’s not too late to join me!

Also, over on the Bloggy Boot Camp Forum at BlogFrog, a thread was started by Nirvana Mama stating that Darren at ProBlogger.net was offering a 25% discount (final price $15) on his workbook, Give me 31 Days and I’ll Give You a Dramatically Better Blog… Guaranteed if one could get more than 5 people together in a small-niche community to participate. Response has been overwhelming! Please head on over to the BlogFrog thread if you are interested in signing up! The information with the promotional code to use is on page 6 of the thread. We are starting July 12. I love reading the ProBlogger site and Digital Photography School, both run by Darren, so I am so excited!

Now onto the editing!

Basic Edits

I started with very basic edits: Levels, MCP’s Magic Recovery at 100%, Magical Clarity and In Stark Contrast.

From there I wanted to crop it. That big metal box in the foreground had to go and the pole in the background was also terribly distracting. I didn’t want to crop out too much of the background though because I liked the sunny effect going on and I also liked the street, trees and mountains.

It looked like it would be a tough job to clone or sample out the metal box, but I thought I could tackle the pole. So I cropped to exclude the box and cloned and sampled the pole out of existence. Don’t be intimidated of cloning and sampling by the way. It’s very easy and took less than 5 minutes!

To fill in the white void of sky and add some warmth, I added MCP’s Fake Sunset Illusion and PB’s Kaleidoscope Big Bokeh II overlay.

Fun Edit #1

Now that I have the basic legwork done, I can really start playing with it and see what I can come up with. First up, my new favorite color popper, MCP’s Soft Color action from the All in the Details set. I can never remember how I set all the layers, but I rarely use an action without adjusting it to fit the photo. I also cropped it a little more because I’m not sure how I feel about that sky.

This is a fairly good place to stop. I like the improvement from the original and the essence of the photo wasn’t lost. Here it is side-by-side with the original:

Fun Edit #2

Itching to try out a practical application for Paint the Moon‘s absolutely wonderful First Class Freebies, I tried out Sweet Treats Lemon and Honey. I truly love the way she labels and arranges her layers. I am detail oriented and love being able to control every detail and her actions make that very easy! I love this edit.

Side by side with the original:

Fun Edit #3

I processed some textures yesterday and I’ve been itching to apply them to something. (I’m woefully behind on processing my photos.) I took my Dark Summer Concrete 2 and added a circular-shape blur to it to create a new texture. I applied this to the Lemon and Honey edit above in Soft Light at 70% opacity. I used a layer mask to erase some of the effect from his face and body. Truth be told, I’m thrilled with how this came out. I know nothing about creating textures, so it’s a wonder this is usable!

If you’re interested in using this texture or any of those I created yesterday, you can download it for free from Flickr by clicking on the image. Please leave me a comment on Flickr, on this site, or send me an email or something if you use it. You don’t have to, but I would really love to see it! All my photos are licensed under creative commons as indicated at the bottom of this site.

Before and After side-by-side:

What’s you’re favorite edit? I am terribly behind today so I am just starting to check others’ submissions now. If you want me to make sure to get to yours as soon as possible, please leave me a comment (even if it’s just to say, “Hey, I participated too, please go check me out.”)

Update: I’ve been through all the links so far! If I didn’t comment on yours, it was an oversight!

I’m still trying to drum up fans for my new Facebook fan page. If you “Like” me, I’ll reciprocate! Also, you’ll probably be interested in reading my Friday Finds: Low Angles post for this week if you want a plethora of cool Photography and photo editing related links!

Have a good weekend everyone!