Good to Wow: Hearts Edition, Edited

This week, in between trying to deal with a leaky roof and trying to be a better mom, I also got an opportunity to snap a lot of heart pictures. And here they are along with the edited versions:

SOOC:


It's cutesy, cutesy, I know. Anyway...this is what I did:
1. basic RAW edits
2. placed a pink/purple texture, adjusted to multiply blending mode
3. new layer (ctrl-j)
4. adjusted new layer to overlay, reduced opacity
5. placed CS cream swirl texture, adjusted to soft light
6. added text



SOOC:


1. basic RAW edit
2. crop
3. high pass filter, luminosity blend
4. CS texture 6
5. adjusted to overlay blend @ 100% opacity, brushed off in spots

SOOC:


1. basic RAW edit
2. added black gradient fill layer (adjusted to 40%) to take care of some of the excessive side light (I have terrible lighting in my house, so I take most of my pictures right by the kitchen window. If it is an item I am photographing, it often goes on the counter, and the light from the window lights up its side. My next house will have great light.
3. CS Urban grit brushed on to cookie cutter @ 100%
4. placed scratch texture, adjusted to overlay blending mode, 50% opacity,
brushed off cookie cutter with brush @ 50%

SOOC:


1. used magic extractor to select my husband's hand and make background black (many thanks to Lindsay at Looking for Strawberries for searching for and sending me a tutorial on how to use this wonderful tool!)
2. adjusted tone of hand
3. selected heart and brightened a bit, increased saturation
4. added gaussian blur to hand

SOOC:


1. tilt & crop
2. added texture (oh freckle from Deviant Art), adjusted to 75% opacity
3. brushed off candy hearts at 30%

SOOC:

I totally cheated with this one! I wanted to replace the background with a black background, but I just couldn't get the magic extractor to work on her hair wispies without taking up time I really don't have. So I went and bought a piece of black velvet fabric, which I should have done a long time ago, and re-shot the SOOC:


1. basic RAW edit
2. crop
3. high pass filter and blended in soft light, adjusted to 50%
4. desaturated a bit (I am not a big fan of BRIGHT RED unless it's on a barn or STOP sign. Or apparently my lips as we saw last week, but I wasn't a huge fan of that either; I just did it because the theme was red.)
5. added a gradient layer to soften the glare on her face a bit (still trying to learn to use my new Speedlight.)

SOOC:


I know - there are no hearts in this photo! I just couldn't work well around her arm, and I loved her face so much, I wanted to focus on that. Here are the edits:
1. basic RAW edits
2. selected inverse - blurred background
3. CS Perfect Portrait - used color pop, skin smoothing, and vignette
4. CS Johnna's Tea Party with contrast @ 15%

SOOC:


Audrey with candy hearts
1. basic edit
2. skin smoothing, vignette from CS Perfect Portrait
3. Johnna's Tea Party with contrast at 35%

Here's what I am learning so far in my photographer journey. I need to really work on exposure. I am metering my pictures correctly, but I am still having to constantly up the exposure when I edit them in RAW. Maybe it's because I am inside ALL THE TIME?? (Have I mentioned there has been A LOT of snow up here for our first winter in the Arctic?) That maybe mixed with the poor lighting - perhaps I just need to overexpose them a bit on the meter. Anyway, just thinkin' out loud...