I ♥ Faces - Fix it Friday!

What a great photo they have for Fix It Friday this week!  Here's one of my takes on it (more to follow).  Head on over to http://iheartfaces.blogspot.com/ if you want to play along or just see other renditions of the photo!

The biggest problem is underexposure. Here is the before.

Here is my 'regular' after.

Here are my steps!
Lightroom

Used eyedropper on white of eyes to adjust white balance.  This changed temp to +41, +48
Manual Adjustments to:
Exposure +75
Fill Light +21
Brightness +50

Did you know you can adjust luminance sliders of orange, red and yellow to remove ruddiness out of skin?  I didn't until about a month ago and it's been my new favorite thing.  SO easy!  The key is to move the saturation slider DOWN and the luminance slider UP. 

Red
Saturation -19
Luminance +23

Orange
Saturation -19
Luminance +23

My last step in Lightroom was to do a noise reduction of 50, there was inevitably going to be some noise from the underexposure and I like to touch that up in Lightroom.

Now off to Photoshop!

MCP Actions Magic Powder - opacity adjusted to 50.  I then masked it off her lips, I still wanted them to look dewy.  This step almost COMPLETELY fixes the face.  It's a godsend!

MCP Eye Doctor - I only used Sharp as a Tack and Enhance Catchlights on eyes - both at 50% opacity.  I then used the 'Darken Pupil' step on the LIPS at a 20% opacity :)

I then brightened up under the eyes and smoothed it out just a bit and spot removed some of the leftover blemishes and stray hair :)

Here is the same edit but with my FAVORITE 'Chocolate Covered Strawberries' from MCP

Creative Aged Preset in Lightroom

Here is the color one again but with a bit of a 'Boost' from Pioneer Woman and then I used Heavy Fog Fixer from MCP to clear up some of the haziness. :)