Fix-It Friday #66, I ♥ Faces

It's Fix-It Friday at i heart faces. They post an original, straight-out-of-the-camera shot for us to take and edit however we wish.
Above you can see the original they gave us this week. The immediate problems I found with the picture were the sleeve of his buddy in the shot, and the washed out tone of the entire photo.

I don't know that I like my first edit. It looks like a school photo. I edited it to a 4x6 portrait size, and did all my basic edits in photoshop. I brightened the photo, brought up the saturation, used a brush to bring out the outline of the irises, sharpened the lines in the photo, angled it a little to the left, and used mcpactions.com magic skin/magic powder action to smooth the face.

Next, I cropped the photo into a landscape 4x6, again removing his buddy from the shot, and angling our fellow a little to the left. I used the same edits as before and added to it. In mcpactions' Quickie Collection, I used the Snap action to sharpen the features up a bit more. Then with mcpactions' Bag of Tricks I used Magic Dark to take down the brightness of the face.

Then, I took that same picture and opened the Pioneer Woman's Action Set 1, and ran the lovely and ethereal action, followed by the soft and faded action.

And last, I opened mcpactions' Frosted Memories set and ran the faded edges, low res action, followed by the toasted edges, low res action. I love the way this one turned out. I think it's my favorite of the group - a little old-fashioned looking, soft and sweet. Just like I imagine the little boy to be :).

You can find out more about mcpactions HERE.
You can find the Pioneer Woman's free actions HERE.
And to see how everyone else edited this shot, or to post your own edits, go HERE.