Before 'n After. 2.

I had a lot of fun sharing my last before 'n after ... 'specially 'cause some of you nice readers left such nice comments, which of course made my day. So I thought I would share another one from the session I'm in the middle of editing right now. I was going for just a good, clean edit on this one. Nothing too dramatic, but enough that the image would pop. And I'm happy with how it turned out:

Now I know the "details" behind the edit is mumbo-jumbo to a lot of my readers, but I still like to document it, even for just myself!

I started out with the "standards", which I run at the beginning of almost every picture: portraiture, contrast and levels adjustments, and {typically} "Musette" from Florabella's luxe collection that I love to run at a super low opacity. Just gives a little somethin' extra that I like.

Then I tried a couple of new things with this one that I just loved and think made a huge difference. I started with the high pass filter to really make the bricks pop out, followed up by the "select-o-sharp" action by TRA that I brushed on the bricks as well. I also burned the edges quite a bit to add dimension and used the "lights out" action and then masked back my subject who became too dark as a result of the action. To pull out the color in the shirt I used "MCP fingerpaint" from the MCP quickie collection. And that's pretty much it. Took a bit of time, but I was having so much fun seeing the picture emerge how I envisioned it!

In other news, the boys had great first days of school and I shot about 200 pictures documenting the day ... seeing that I'm still stuck in JUNE with personal edits, hopefully it won't take too long until I can share them. I'm getting anxious to clear out my backlog, though, and plan on editing like a madwoman for the next two days, especially because I leave on Sunday for AFTER DARK in PORTLAND!!! I'm so incredibly excited for this photography workshop and hope to come back just brimming with new ideas. And hopefully not incredibly overwhelmed!