I admit this image needed a careful strategy because although I love all the sunlight in the background I wanted to bring out the teen in the foreground.

Starting by duplicating the background layer and creating a new levels layer I moved the dark slider over toward the middle canceling out some of the over all light saturating the image.

Then I ran MCP’s touch of light or touch of darkness and used the touch of light on just the teen.

Ctrl+shift+alt+e to create a merged layer and ran CoffeeShop’s Picture Perfect. Changed the opacity of the vignette layer will soften the edge burn.

Moving back down to the original background layer I ran Pioneer Woman’s slight sharpen to bring out just a touch more detail.

And here we are:

The original:

Popularity: 18% [?]

The original image can be viewed here. A rather lovely shot of those adorable little toes, I found myself wondering how to improve on it. I opted to make it a more of a scrapbook page with some added kisses, a frame, and a touch of texture. Hope you like it.

Popularity: 34% [?]

There are a couple spots I think I missed on the forehead when I ran CoffeeShop’s powder room action initially. However, after a lot of toying and playing with the levels and adding a barely visible texture to the background I like the result. I was going for light and ethereal with a touch of innocence..

Here is the original.

Popularity: 39% [?]