A Bright Summery Happy Portrait Effect

[lemonjenny]

Hi everyone! I'm new here, and also a new DSLR user. Here's a fun effect I came up with using Photoshop.

I achieved this effect by:
-first using the heal brush to eliminate blemishes, sun spots and wrinkles
-raise the brightness, saturation, and contrast
-duplicate the layer, set to "overlay" and adjust opacity down very low (just adds a little pop)
-duplicate the layer again, set that layer to black and white, and lighten it so it's very high contrast, and very bright.
-set THAT layer to soft light or overlay (mess with the settings) and turn down the opacity a lot
-create a new layer on top, fill with a summery lemon yellow, set to "hard light" or "soft light" and turn down opacity a lot
-merge layers together
-duplicate layer AGAIN and do Filter>Other>High Pass
-set that layer to overlay, and fill the entire layer with a layer mask (hide all)
-with a white brush, paint white over the eyes and anything else you want to pop, then adjust the layer opacity to get a natural looking effect
-merge layers
-duplicate layer again, and turn brightness up a lot, and contrast ALL the way up.
-add a 10point (or more) gausian blur to that layer
-set to overlay, and turn down opacity to around 15%
-Merge together, then mess with the curves/brightness/contrast to get the brightness just right
-Add an unsharp mask if necessary
-Use the dodge brush on "midtones" to brighten pupils, whites of eyes, and under eye areas (not too much!)

That's a very rough guide, but gives you an idea of a lot of small things you can do to make a photo pop!

What do you think?

Before: (virgin picture out of the camera)


After:

[SoMdGirl83]

Great Job!

[03mach1speed]

Pretty subjects always help a photo, nice job......

[Digidave]

Absolutely wonderful job on her face! The only things that bother me are the vignetting(upper right-hand corner) & the lose of detail to her blouse. Her eyes really pop in that second photo though. Nice job!

[angkulturangewan]

yes. definitely the second one has better colors and yes, (again) the vignette seems to be out of place?

[lemonjenny]

Thank you! I definitely appreciate the feedback. I agree about the vignetting... I threw it in and didn't even notice it looked weird.

[mamalan]

Really liking that. Very happy eyes. Love the hair colour.

I agree with Digidave about the blouse. I'm wondering if you masked off some of the early brightness and contrast just in the blouse it might not make it quite so blown out.
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