Candid shot C&C please.

One of my volunteers has a 9 year-old daughter who hates to have her picture taken. In every picture I've ever seen her in, she's scowling, including the family portraits. I got a candid shot of here the other day, in which she actually looks happy. She screamed at me, but her mother ran over and forbade me from deleting the picture. I have been experimenting with cleaning up the background. I have Photostudio 5.5 (it came with the camera), and am new to working with layers. I saved several versions.

This is the original pic (cropped and resized)...

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It's a cute picture of the girl . Here is my take on the edit. It's not perfect but you get the idea.

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Thank you.

Some of my daughter's friends act that way too. One day I gave them my Canon point-n-shoot digital and had them shoot each other (silly poses, serious, glamor, etc.). Then I gave them some guidance on how to pose (for me) with my camera and they seemed to like the pictures I shot of them. Now they don't seem to mind when I get out the big CANON and point it at them.

Here is my version ... lighter so you can see her better.

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I like the way she turned out, but I need to obscure the background more. What did you do to lighten her up the way you did?

Isolate her like you did in your second picture, inverse your selection, and add sometype of blur. I don't know the software your using, but it should have something to that effect.

Since she was so dark, I made a dupe layer and then used Screen in blending modes in Photoshop. There was a lot more to it than that but screen was what I used mostly to brighten up her face.

D. Craig Flory PPA Certified, Cr.Photog., ASP
loryphotog@mindspring.​com