I found a cool photo contest I am entering just for the heck of it from a great website called Love Your Shot! (see entry #169). I’m glad I came across this because the other night during one of my late night web surfing sessions I came across the most incredible Photoshop Actions & Textures from Florabella – you must check them out and it just so happens to be the prize for this contest! It’s a link up so I want to say a special hello to any new readers who came here via the link-up! Welcome! You may want to start here to get a little background or just look back one post and you’ll see what I’m really all about cookie dough and coffee.

So today the challenge was to take a face photo from either Sept. or Oct. edit to your hearts content and then share your steps, sometime you;ll see this on photo blogs referred as the “recipe”. This is all the steps you did in your post photo process. Many of you may use programs like Apeture, Lightroom or Photoshop or CS which by the way all offer a 30 day free trial to try! but there are some great free ones like Flickr’s Picnik (which I used to create that before and after below), Google’s Picasa and Gimp (<–most like photoshop). And then there are presets and actions and textures and frames… oh my. I go 10 ways of crazy for all the extras which I know eats up A LOT of my so-called free time. But what can I say I love to play with photos I completely lose myself and decompress when I’m alone in my office with my Lightroom.

So here’s a little peak at what I do (all day long… no strike… I meant all night long) and I’d have it no other way.

Most of my pictures (especially in low light) come our flat meaning little or no contrast, you know that grayish look, not impressive. Here is a perfect example of my daughter in the tub. This is what I had to start with. Totally meh.

and then I start messing around with the white balance, the curves, brushes, healing tool and add a little cross balance in the mix and viola…

not bad eh?

here are the exact steps:

Using Adobe Lightroom 3 and Nik Color Efx Pro 3.0

Import photo (converting to a DNR) I work with RAW files vs. JPEG I find that RAW files “play nicely” with presets and actions.

• Auto White Balance
• Tone Curve -Highlights +100
• Light tones +71
• Dark tones +73
• Shadow +31
• Crop (to better frame her face)
• Brush tool (using the ‘make up’ brush) soften the red spots and redness under right eye
• Brush Tool (general brush) add a little sharpness & contrast to the bubbles on her chin
• Brush Tool (‘Iris enhance’ brush) draw around the iris to lighten and make eyes brighter

(you can download the brushes (LightRoom only) at LightRoom Killer Tips here)

Open photo in Color Efx Pro

• Cross Balance feature – tungsten to daylight

You can see how just a few changes, yes I promise the steps were small and quick, resulted in a photo worthy entry. What do you think?

I thouroughly enjoyed that mini session, took my mind off that kitchen that’s waiting for me. Sigh. I must go clean and then take my assignment photo for Big Picture Fall before the day is over.

…. by the way I created a place for my daily photos they have a home over here. I will of course I’ll keep sharing my work here on the modchik like Big Picture Fall assignments and other random photoliciousness (that’s my new fav word). Moving forward all the hard core photog stuff (and eventually… workshop information <– yep I’m developing some beginner classes) will be post on the modchikphoto blog. See you over there!