fix it friday!

Didn't I just say 2 posts ago that I'm now hooked on the i heart faces blog? Yep - it's true! Here's my take on this week's fix it friday. Fun exercise, stretching the old creative cells.

here's the original photo from Sarah:

Here's my fix #1:

Couldn't resist adding in a touch of sun flare to emphasize the great light coming in on here gorgeous eyes. And' I'm a bit partial to that red hair!!! My fixes were done in PS Elements. Here's the general skinny:

- Created 2 copies of the original background layer
- Applied screen to first layer copy
- Applied soft light (40% opacity) to second layer copy
- Desaturated the red in the photo just a bit (-5)
- Merged all layers
- Created a vignette layer around her hands, arms and face and and blurred the edges of the vignette
- Popped the background layer a bit using multiply and soft light
- Increased the saturation of yellow in her hair, used skin tone correction to warm up her face a bit, color corrected the whites of her eyes and teeth just a bit
- Popped her eyes a bit by enhancing the saturation, sharpness and lighting in the irises
- Applied lens flare, but reduced the opacity of the flare.

And here's my fix #2:

I love the green and oranges in the original, but I decided to try draining the color a little bit to see the effect. I was pleased with the warmth of this effect. Just did a few additional tweeks to my first edit:
- Desaturated first image about 45%
- Created a duplicate layer and applied soft light
- Applied slight warming filter