don't throw away images - soften skin

Unless your photo is just really awful -way out of focus or cut off someone someone's head, don't throw it away.  At times I will pick up my camera for a shot and not realize I still have my manual exposure set from a much different lighting.  Like this shot.

Instead of tossing it, I thought I would try something with it.  I took it to photoshop as a black and white image, and bumped up the exposure a bit.   Then with a few selective (using some masks) exposure and contrast adjustments, I found a look I liked much better.

Here is the snapshot of the layers I used.  Sorry, no more explanation than this... but the layers should be quite self explanatory.

I realized as I was about to post this that I have never done the soften skin tutorial.

I will have to do so later, but for now click here for the quick skin fix tutorial