I use PSE8, that should come as no surprise to most people who read this blog. I have a few different plug-ins for it which provide me some of the missing components from the big-dog Photoshop. The one I love playing with the most is SmartCurves. It’s a free plug-in (for PC’s only, sorry Macs) and it allows me to play with the red, green and blue colors separately and to save curve “formulas” as presets of sorts.
Anyway, the point of that information is that I was playing with my SmartCurves one day, creating some neat, ultra creamy curve settings and then played with the blend modes. Well, I happened upon something I really liked. It lightened and creamed the skin in such a way that made other skin tweaking unnecessary. I have a copy of old PS7, so I opened it up and duplicated the steps, creating the Makeover action.
Below is a Before and After example, using only the Makeover action – no other editing done (except eye sharpening).
I had someone at Clickin Moms test it for me and after a few changes, I posted it as a freebie on the “Pay It Forward” board (if you aren’t on Clickin Moms, that board alone is worth joining). Many people have raved over it, sharing their pictures edited with it. So, I thought I’d share it here for my Photography Haven friends.
Let me tell you first, it is not perfect, but it is useful. You may want to invert the two creamy layers and brush on the effect, instead of brushing it off of everything else. To do that, press “control” and “i” (or “command” and “i” on a Mac) to invert those layers, then brush on with a soft, white brush set to like 60% opacity.
This action is best for Caucasian women and girls, and babies of both sex.
You can download Makeover HERE.
PSE users, don’t worry, a post about SmartCurves and the presets/action for Makeover coming soon. Too much to mix the two in one post.
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Will this work in PSE6? Would I need to download a plug-in (whatever that is!) or can you not use plug-ins with PSE6? Thanks for posting this!