It's Friday! – Baby Boy Blue

I love Fridays! I love it more now that I have my work done (sort of). Now I’m going to play!

I’m lurking constantly over at iheartfaces.com now. It’s a wonderful resource and a great way to improve you photography AND you should see what others are doing over there. Fridays are play day and I’m possessed with the photography bug. Possessed (too many s’?) I say! I’m glad to know I’m not alone…

Today’s assignment is this cute little boy. When I first saw the picture I thought…

1) black and white
2) soft, soft, soft
3) melancholy and tired. Makes me want to rock him and sing him to sleep.

So here goes,

Black and white.

I’m using Photoshop in CS2. I ran B’s Vanilla B&W II on it. Then I ran Glam Blur on it, using all default setting because I’m lazy. I downloaded both of them a long time ago and I can’t find the link for it. I will try to find it again and update this post. Shoot. Anyway I then ran PW’s Bring On The Eyes and lowered the opacity to 50%. I selectively cropped and am done!

The before and after. Or rather, after and before. Just like me to get it backward.

Now some color and some softness, because I can’t stop!

Soft, soft, soft.

I ran TRA2, Pool Party action, flatten. I then ran Smooth-O-Matic, same action set. Flatten. Then PW’s Bring On The eyes, lower to 50% opacity. Flatten.

Unlike the beautiful red-head from last week, I thought this photo just needed a light touch. I wanted to leave the furrowed brow. It’s adorable.

Sometimes running too many actions will make you dependent on the actions and take away the inclination to learn Photoshop. But the actions themselves are the tool so why not? Besides, I literally can be here all day otherwise, and love every minute of it. But I do have to pick up the boy from school now. I remember when he was this little…really breaks my heart.