Fix-it Friday #70 at i heart faces

This Fix-it Friday photo was submitted by Amy Locurto, an IHF contributor. What a beautiful little girl! Here is the original photo:



And here is my edit (image is clickable to see it larger):



I'm working on a cleaner editing style at the moment, so hopefully I achieved that. I thought this image was really strong to begin with but had too much contrast. I'm noticing on the blog, however, that my edit looks a bit soft in the contrast department, but looking at it full-size, it seems okay? So first I opened the photo in ACR, fiddled with the white balance just a bit, upped recovery just a bit to tone down the highlights, and added a tiny bit of center fill light. I then reduced the contrast a lot. Then I opened the image in CS4.

Workflow in PS CS4:
~adjusted levels
~Noiseware at low opacity
~I thought the girl's right eye looked a little off in the lower section, so I duplicated the left eye, masked it to only cover the bright section, and lowered the opacity to 80%
~created a curves layer set to screen, masked and inverted, then gently painted in with a 20% opacity brush under the eyes to lighten the shadows there
~added a color fill layer with an off-white and set to luminosity, lowered opacity to 20% to brighten skin tones
~added a vignette
~ran TRA's web-ready sharpening action

Thanks for looking and come check out the other edits at i heart faces!