Fix It Friday

Every Friday over at iheartfaces.com they offer up an image so we can have our try at editing it our way. So, I have to begin by saying that I DID NOT take this photo, but I am responsible for the edit you see below (good or bad.)

My processing is usually all over the place depending on what the original image looks like and I love to use My Four Hens Photography Actions or Florabella Actions.  However,  I decided to process this one (using Photoshop CS5) without any actions and here are my basic changes:

• I added a levels layer set at screen to bring more light to their faces. I did use the layer mask to mask out those parts of the photo that were too bright.
• I applied a curves layer and did some cross processing with the red and green channels.
• Bumped up saturation and adjusted the hue just slightly towards blue
• I added another levels layer to darken
• Added a color balance layer to adjust for skin tone
• Finally, I added a gorgeous Jessica Drossin texture for little extra pop.

I know these are fairly generic instructions, but if you have any questions let me know. I am by no means a pro or expert, but I will be glad to help.  Here is my After version.

 So, there you go.  My first attempt at Fix-It Friday.