Newborn sweetness....(how to get it?)

[Tamster]

Good Morning! I have researched this time and time again, but haven't found anything that I can run with and make work. Wondering how you may begin editing your newborn shoots and and tips and tricks that may be helpful for a fairly newbie at editing?!
I have PSE9 and I have installed a few actions that seem to be ok...But not the pop that I see in some other fab newborn photographers. And i'm sure its very helpful to get it right as you are in the shooting process .. But I'm not THAT good yet!! Thanks! Can't wait to see what you may be able to share!

[Tamster]

I've added a image here.. (Hope that is ok?) Of course the obv. is that the left corner needs to be fixed.

[kelleyrie]

Well I tend to like newborn portraits overexposed so here's what I did.
I cloned the blanket in the left corner, then pulled out some of the shadows and lightened it a bit using curves, then I did a soft glow filter over the whole thing. This is using GIMP.

[SusanH1970]

Hey Tammy,

I played around with it just a little using PSE7 and am really not thrilled with the results - if I had a full-res RAW to work with I'm sure I could have done a lot more, lol. Anyway....here's my version. I "opened as" a RAW file in ACR in PSE7 and warmed up the white balance a touch. In Elements I did a color balance layer and pulled out some magenta. Then I did my friend Vinnie's skin smoothing technique found here (post #11 on page 2 amongst the debate, lol). I still wasn't happy with how it looked so I used a CoffeeShop action I had floating around, lol. Then I cropped to a square crop since it was quite centered.

If you hate it, I'll take it right down, just say the word.

ETA: Every newborn photographer I know that rocks it doesn't rely on actions. Great lighting, perfect exposure and focus, and good in-camera composition is what makes them rock. Images are just tweaked in post-processing, not run through a gazillion actions.