Cooper

I went to Lennox Head over easter hol and met my newphew Cooper for the first time. I took some photos of him, even though all he can really do yet is lie there.

The best way to convert a photo like this to black and white is to go into the channels pallette and select only the red channel. If you look at just the red channel, even the blotchiest skin is rendered smooth, with no need for the healing tool.

Next, you need to split the channels, which will make a seperate new file for each colour. You can delete the blue and green channels. They will probably look horrid anyway. Convert the red file back to RGB so you can work with it.

Another trick I learnt from Yervant is to then copy the main layer, and do a Diffuse Glow filter on it. That's under Filters > Distort > Diffuse Glow. The file needs to be prety big for it to work though, otherwise the filter overpowers the image. Next, drop the opacity of the glow layer til it's more subtle. Ta da. You have a lovely soft focus image.