Anatomy of...That Girl

I love this picture of That Girl.

I love the hair...the expression...everything about it:)  She was such a dream to work with too and she was so cooperative for me, which isn't always the case with 3 year olds!  


So as soon as the shoot is over I rush home, download my pictures and open this one first thing....
...and I....just...stare....at it.  


I'm blank.  I've got nothin.  I'm staring at this fabulous photograph that I'm dying to "mess" with and I can't decide what to do.  Has that ever happened to you?  Sometimes there's just too many options...



So I closed the picture and actually ended up editing this picture last!  Although I still couldn't decide exactly which direction to go so I ended up doing a few different edits.


I started off very dramatic. I know, you're shocked.  Me, dramatic??


I forgot to write down anything for this one but it was really just some basic steps:
1.  close-up crop
2.  dark black & white conversion
3.  Lustre b&w texture from Kaleidoscope


Here's what I got and I think it went really good with her expression:

Now that I'd done a horizontal crop I decided to do another one more "traditional" edit and keep some of the color and show the entire pretty little face.


1.  I softened the skin in Coffeeshop Powder Room 2 then ran Erin's Defog at "Pretty Foggy"
2.  I added Sheer Gold at 67% from Kaleidoscope
     I added Worn/Scratched from Shadowhouse Creations (I *think* that's where I got it) at 100% 
     then I added a layer mask and erased part of it off her face
Here's my layers palette:

3.  I ran the Coffeeshop action Johnna's Tea Party w/contrast boost at 81% then flattened my image.

4.  I added Dream Sequence V texture from Kaleidoscope then I lassoed the face and part of her hair to 

     blur the texture but keep the color enhancement.  If you haven't used that technique before you can 

     read the details here .

    Here's what my photo looked like with the face/hair lassoed:

 

5.  I reduced the opacity of the Dream Sequence layer to 67% and here's my finished portrait.  

 

I still wanted to see what else I could do though so I ran the Irish Breakfast Tea action on the above photo for a more "white" version of the black & white I had done.  Here's a 2nd option:

And finally, because I have major editing issues, I had to do...just...one...more and played around with my new NicholeV textures to create this photo:

Check back next week for the complete Anatomy of that edit.  I just won some NicholeV textures so I'm wanting to play with them some more and then do a whole post dedicated to my new goodies:)

I usually have a pretty good idea of where I want to go with a photo from the second I see it thru my lens, but this one just really stumped me.  I still haven't decided if any of these edits are my "favorite".  I'm thinking I'll be doing a hundred different things to this one before I'm finally satisfied.

What do you think?  Are any of these your favorites or maybe you've got a great suggestion for me?  Leave a comment and tell me what's on your mind!