Edit Me Challenge - Week 9

I really enjoy these challenges, but I always shy away from photos of people that have to be edited. I have never really edited photos of people because I just don't feel I do them justice. I've tried to edit two different challenges with children in them, but shied away from posting them. Well today I am going to take the plunge and do my first edit with a person in it. I couldn't resist this little cutie's face, so I got up the nerve and here are the results...

The before photo was provided by this week's guest judge Stephanie, over at Behind the Camera and Dreaming. She is his mommy also : )

Here is my edit, and my favorite because I think he looks like the Gerber baby:

The blanket, and the backyard background reminded me of photos in my mother's family album, so I went for the faded 50s look using these techniques:
French Kiss textures, Dandelion Fuzz and Dirt in soft light blend mode.
Texas Chicks action, Define and Sharpen.
Rad Lab plugin stylettes, Warm It Up, Montecito, Vanilla Kiss, Black and White.
I was doing a lot of trial and error, so I don't have the exact recipe for the edit, but those are the things I used to achieve this look.

Before I changed the photo to black and white, I saved the color version because I really liked it too. Although I didn't enter these in the challenge, I thought I'd post them as well : )

I couldn't resist adding a vintage frame from The Coffee Shop Blog to go with the edit.

If you enjoy editing photos, you should give this challenge blog a try!