At the Beach (Edit)

Branson at My Reflection of Something is hosting a new-ish photo challenge called Edit Me, and I thought I'd try my hand at it.

She provides a photo and then we get to edit it to our own taste or style.

Here is the SOOC shot she gave us to work with:



And here is my edit:



I did most of my work in Lightroom 3. I started by warming it up just a bit, then I ran a graduated filter to decrease the exposure on the sky to darken it up a little.

I used the adjustment brush to bring back the exposure on dad's back and brightened the whole thing up a bit using the tone curve.

Then I pulled it in to Photoshop and ran Amy McMaster's AMP Black & White and toggled off the b&w layer. I added a soft pink fill layer at 14%, ran the Paint the Moon sharpen for web action, and that was it.

It's always fun to see before and afters. There are so many things you can do to make a photo really shine!