Fix-it Friday #50

I needed to do something just because today so I decided to participate in i ♥ faces fix it Friday!  Plus I could not resist playing with a photo of a beautiful subject!!  So here we go! Here is the image SOOC.

The first thing I did was pull the image into Lightroom 2 (my editing program of choice for most things). In LR2, I corrected the white balance and brightened the image. I also used the brush to brighten the eyes!  Next I exported the image from LR2 to Elements 6.  In PSE 6 I used a Scott Kelby trick to do some skin smoothing!  I made a copy of the image and used the Gaussian blur next I added a layer mask.  I grouped the copy and the layer mask and then used a soft white white brush to paint the layer mask and viola, great skin!  I set the brush to 60% opacity and was in lighten mode.  Next I used Pioneer Woman's Bring out The Eyes and Lovely actions!  Here is how the final image looks!

But you know me, I could not leave well enough alone and decided to add a texture just for giggles!!  This texture is a freebie from Jerry at Shadow House Creations and is called XSGrunge!  I just love his textures!!

And could I really go without a bw conversion using Pioneer Woman's BW?  Here ya go!

Now go check out all the other fixes at i ♥ faces!