4.17.2009

Fix-It Friday #10

Another Fix-It Friday from the I <3 Faces blog (http://iheartfaces.blogspot.com)

The original image is absolutely adorable; I was so drawn to this one. However, the colours are washed out and dull and the framing of the rock- while I love it- overpowers the little guy who should be the main focus.

The original image, by Miranda:




I took the following steps to edit this image:

1. Crop. I used a freehand crop and it ended up almost a perfect 2:3 aspect ratio. The purpose of my crop was twofold: to cut out a bunch of the rock, and to get our subject (the little man) at a crosspoint for the rule of thirds. If you put a grid over the edited version, you will see that the top horizontal third line runs through his eyes and the right vertical thirds line runs through the middle of his face. Perfect.
2. Curves. I lightened ever so slightly, then intensified the black tones. This made a huge difference in the photo- the colours are now bright and saturated.
3. Sharpen the image slightly. I ran an Unsharp Mask at 75%, with a radius of 2.0 pixels and a threshold of 0.

That's it- easiest edit ever.

The finished version:



Pop over to the blog and see what other folks have been up to today!

2 comments:

Melinda said...

Beautiful job! I love how you made my little guy the true focus in the photo by doing a closer crop and by really making the colors pop!

Drew said...

I like how your changes are subtle but take care of all the issues in the picture. Now the colors pop, the boy is the center of attention and the lighting is spot-on. Great fix!