iHeart Faces ... Fix-it Friday #30

I love a challenge, and the editing challenges posed by iHeartFaces' Fix-it Fridays go a long way in helping me  to develop my editing skills. This in turn helps me to provide even better images for my clients. This week's image, submitted by Catherine from Catherine Halsey Photography, is no exception. Thank you Catherine for sharing this little cutie with us...

Anyone who has dared to get their camera out of automatic mode has at some point been faced with an accidentally underexposed image when they inadvertently neglected to switch settings between lighting conditions.

It happens.

To all of us.

At least once.

For my fix this week, I got a chance to play with texture. I usually park in the "crisp and simple" camp with my images, so I have never really given texture a second thought. This, however, may be proving to be a mistake. There are a lot of moods that can be created by texture and I had some fun looking for examples of what texture can add to a photo ...

 

 

Very cool.

I started by adjusting the shadows and highlights (in PSE 7, go to 'Enhance', then 'Adjust Lighting', then 'Shadows/Highlights'... then fire at will). This gave me a better idea of what I was working with. I cropped and rotated until it made me smile. :-) Next, I played with the brightness and contrast. I actually tweaked this after each of the steps until I had something I felt was pretty balanced. I applied CoffeeShop's "Give It Texture" action (a first for me) and used a sort of rusted metal background image I had tucked away as the texture layer.

After smoothing and lightening his skin a bit, here is the result ...

For the b&w, I added a bit of vignetting to keep the eye on him ...

Why not try your own fix and then take a look at the amazing job the contributers at iHeartFaces have submitted. So very inspiring...

Have a GREAT weekend!