Here is the original photo we were invited to play with this week

My son has a cracking blue vein on the side of his head, it’s very obvious and I wouldn’t dream of Photoshopping it, so I was a wee bit uncomfortable doing it here, but artistic licence, blah, blah, bit of fun, blah, blah, we were invited to so here it is… my basic fix.

I tried many crops before I got one I was happy with, it’s a bit non standard, not my usual 800px x 535px

• On a duplicate layer I used the Patch tool and patched the vein on her forehead at full 100% and under each eye, faded to 36% under the left (her right) and faded to 17% under the right (her left)
• I ran TRA2 Claire-ify and reduced the opacity to 33% so I could “see” the shadows again
• Next on the Claire-ify layer I created a layer mask and masked off the highlights with a very soft brush
• I bumped the Claire-ify layer back up to 89% so it was fully applied to the shadows, levelling it all out a bit.
• I added a Soft Light at 35% opacity Hue/Saturation adjustment layer Hue 17, Saturation 25, Lightness 0 and Colorized checked.
• Flattened and duplicated layer
• Lastly I ran TRA2 A Better Web Sharpen followed by Photoshop’s own Noise Reduction at Strength 9, Preserve Detail 60%, Reduce Noise Colour 80%, Sharpen Detail 16%

TDW No Glow at 77%, Burn layer fully applied, Skin Correction layer applied everywhere except the face

PW Colorized at 100%
42% opacity Hue/Saturation adjustment layer with Saturation at -72 masked to only apply to the face with a soft brush
100% opacity Brightness/Contrast adjustment layer with contrast bumped up to 29

Now I don’t normally do this sort of thing cos it makes me dizzy but there’s not much needing “fixed” in this photo so faffing around is called for..

• On a duplicate layer I applied a radial blur amount 4, spin, good quality and manually dragged the centre over to where he face is (trial and error)
• Reduced the opacity of this layer to 41%
• Next I added an 80% opacity Levels adjustment layer and darkened the whole thing down before using a 453px soft brush (image in 800px wide) on a layer mask to mask off radiating out from her face leaving a darkened edge to the radial blur.
• Not sure if I like this but tis done now!

TRA2 Get Faded (autumn) 81%
TRA2 Punch Out!  91%
TRA2 Claire-ify 7%
TRA2 Get Faded (winter) 44%

I think this is one of those weeks where the photo didn’t need touching at all and didn’t benefit in any way from my interference. I don’t really like any of these! Well maybe the basic fix, at a push. Bleugh! I’m probably just preoccupied with having my brains sucked out this afternoon. Meh.

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