Fix It Friday

Over at the I ♥ Faces blog they have a feature called "Fix-It Friday". You take an unedited photo (this one was taken by Tracy) and fix it however you want, then post a tutorial on what changes you made. I loved this week's photo and decided to play along.

Here's the original...




And here's my edit of the photo...




Here's what I did...
- Cropped to bring focus to the subject.
- Ran the Fresh & Colorful Action by Pioneer Woman.
- Used the Lasso tool to select child's face and then used the Levels tool to lighten it & warmed subjects skin by adding slight red and yellow tints with the Color Balance tool.
- Used the Blur tool to blur the background grass, tree trunk and some of the closest leaves to camera. Having these elements sharp drew the viewer's eye from the subject.
- Used the Sharpen tool to sharpen the subject's eyes.
- Used the Levels tool to slightly brighten the whites and slightly darken the shadows to created depth and highlight the leaf pile.