Many Faces of Mia

(Ashley's SOOC)

My friend Ashley is hosting a linky party where you take one of her images and explain how you go about improving it. The biggest challenge is how do you improve on perfection? Little Mia is such a little doll with a big personality!!!

I'm no expert, but here's my attempt.

The picture above is my edit in ACR (Adobe Camera Raw). I custom white balanced, upped the exposure/contrast, and messed around a little with the fill light, temperature, and saturation to taste. I also did a slight 3/4 crop.

Next, I moved over to CS5 and ran a few actions. I used Four Hen's actions. Edit 1: AngelKisses. Edit 2: BabyPowder. Edit 3: BabyBreath. Subtle differences, but distinctly different. With actions, I take the ACR version of the photo and then run the action on top of that, then change the opacity to taste.

Edit 4 I just changed to greyscale in ACR.

All in all, I think I'd stick with my ACR shot - it's the closest to SOOC. I love the finished look that actions give, but as a mommy, I love all of the slight imperfections that give the shot character.