Week 37 good to WOW Edit Adult Portrait

On Monday, via flickr, I shared one adult portrait I had taken of a friend from church.  She loves pictures and was a fabulous subject, though the church parking lot probably wouldn't be a location of choice for a professional photographer.  Luckily I am not a pro and a challenging location only forces you to learn more, right?

Anyway, here is the edit of the photo I shared on Monday (mouseover for original).  It might be the favorite of the 32 photos I kept, but it might not be.

I did all of my edits for this one in LR3--+25 vibrance, -20 clarity, +25 contrast, flat tone curve, and custom white balance.  I then applied these settings to all the photos.  Then I used the adjustment brushes.  I whitened her teeth and used the skin softening on her face with the brushes. 

I thought about taking it further, but I thought I would experiment with other similar photos from the day to make things interesting.  I did the same thing as above, but then for skin softening I took it into PSE.

I ran CoffeShop Blog's Perfect Portrait 3 for skin softening and since I was there also brightened the eyes a little.  Then I ran Pure's action No Ordinary Slumber...I really like the tones it adds to a photo, subtle but warm.

I'm not really sure.  The second one certainly looks a little more processed, and that is not really my goal, especially for a snapshot for a friend, but a portrait?  There are opinions on the whole spectrum of options and I just don't know what my opinion is.

But rather than send my friend 10 headshots, I thought I would work on editing one of the full body shots I liked.  I took very few because I just cannot get myself to back up!

The pasted settings, crop, +13 clarity (bringing it to -7), teeth whitening adjustment brush, and small vignette.  Really I am content there, but I decided I wanted a black and white so I took it into PSE and got this:

I know it isn't black and white, but I found the black and white too busy with this background.  I ended up just running two actions: Pure Pop and Pure No Ordinary Slumber; so easy.  (Mouseover to compare the LR3 and PSE edits.)

But I still wanted a black and white.  I know this is getting long, trust me, I know, but bear with me for one last photo and edit, if you will.

Just moved around a few sliders, +.20 exposure, +7 brightness, +2 saturation, +25 vibrance, flat tone preset, and custom white balance and I did use the skin softening adjustment brush.  Then I tried to find a BW preset in LR3 that worked.  I tried a lot of them, but it just wasn't happening for me.  So I took it into PSE again in order to use my fall back, Pioneer Women's BW, but I didn't like that either.  But I finally came up with a black and white photo.

Pure Baby Max, Pure Sunset, and Pure No Ordinary Slumber.  I guess I couldn't quite give up completely on color.

So there you have it...my edits for this week's Shoot and Edit.  Check out Ashley's blog for more portraits!