2 Year Old's Portrait

[naeno]

Sooc:


After:


This portrait was good, but the sky was blown and I couldn't recover any blue from the original.

Opened in GIMP, adjusted levels and curved, zoomed to eyes and selected them, did an unsharp mask on them, Burned around the edges and dodged the middles, opened new sky as a layer and masked unwanted portions, selected the water and bumped up the blues since the water needed to have some of the blue from the sky (realized I over did it and went back to remove some of the color ). My boy was still too dark, so I created a new layer, and painted white over his skin, gaussian blurred it by 200, set the layer mode to Overlay, and reduced the opacity to give a little more light on him, Cropped

What do you think?

UPDATE: I've reworked it again, and think this is the best so far.

[MSidPhoto]

Nice work, cute boy

[Silverz]

nice improvement

[PowerPix]

I don't care for the edit. It looks too fake.

[CanonRebelz]

Good edit.. but.. is it just me, or does the sky look to bright in the finished version? Try reducing some of the blue using curves, and if that makes it too weird, cancel it, go to something like Picnik (I say Picnik because I use it for some things) (and even if you don't have premium version you can do this) upload the photo, go to create, effects, and select black and white. Click the brush symbol, paint everything back to normal by clicking Original and making the brush big and clicking and dragging all over. Then select the Effect button and decrease the brush size, and make the sky black and white. Then on the side bar on the left, make the fade from 0% to something like.. 60 at least. Start with 60, work your way up or down depending on what you want it to be. That may help.
Otherwise, good save on the shadows around the eyes and parts of the face. Bring it down a notch tho and it would be better, but good shot with great improvement!

[naeno]

Reworked it. Left the water alone, toned down the colors in the sky (it looked a bit to dark to me the first time, so I ended up going too bright, go figure), and didn't go quite so much on his eyes.

[LifePhotography08]

I love how you made him stand out from the background in your edit. It's a very nice shot and he is a very cute boy.

[PowerPix]

It's "better".... I think his eyes are still overdone. Plus it's almost like he is too bright, making it appear as though you cut a pasted him into a photo with a piece of pier wood.