I’m a big fan of I Heart Faces, they have wonderful tutorials and are a great resource for photographers. They do a weekly Fix It Friday in which they supply a photo that needs some editing help. This week I decided to participate and put my own spin on the photo.

This is also a good example of what goes into custom photography (and why it costs so much – you don’t see Wal-Mart or Sears doing these things to your photos!). It takes a LONG time to master Photoshop, and if you’re hiring and paying for a custom photographer, make sure they know their stuff! I spend a huge amount of my time sitting at my computer after every session making each image perfect. You wouldn’t believe the details I look at in every shot and make sure everything’s super duper!

So, on to the photo. Here’s the before:

And the after:

Here’s some of what I did to the photo, all in Photoshop CS4:

1. Crop
2. Run an unsharp mask
3. Clone out the white door in the background
4. Used MCP’s Magic Color Finder Brush (Vivid) on everything but the skin
5. Used the spot healing brush very lightly on portions of his face
6. Ran TRA’s Oh Snap action at about 75% opacity
7. Burned the edges of the photo slightly
8. Re-sized and sharpened for web

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