Before & After: Bliss

This is one of my favorite photos.  I took it on a warm day last Spring using my Canon 5D and my favorite portrait lens (EF85mm f/1.8).  I didn't know very much about editing photos so I was happy that this one looked pretty nice SOTC (strait out of the camera).  Over the last few months, I've learned a lot about how to edit my photos and I've been eager to test my new skills on this photo.  I use Photoshop CS4 and Lightroom2.    One of the things I like best about photo editing is that I can fix most of the problems I encounter because of bad camera settings.  For some reason, I can't seem to totally figure out what all of those buttons on my camera mean.  I can fly a 3 million dollar helicopter but I can't figure out my camera.  Go figure. Anyway, I took an online class from Lisa and she taught me a dozen simple tricks and even though the individual changes were very subtle, the final results were impressive. Then I went a step further by layering on a texture from my sweet friend Shana. This time, it was "Florabella Champagne (warm)" and I used a blending mode of "soft light".  Lisa taught me how to do all of this and I tried many different styles and blending modes until I got just the right effect.  When I saw it, I knew it was perfect.  Really, it took my breath away! Finally, I added a little bit of vignette and a drop shadow and was finished and pretty darn happy with the result. Here's the original photo: Check out the other Before & After photos on Pixel Perfect (click the button below)