My first new-born... literally

[ewick]

Hello every one... so this is literally my first time shooting a new born and while I got some good shots... I had a question on editing ( maybe this is not the right place to ask but MODs please feel free to move it to the right section if needed) I got lucky and was able to pose him. This is not my most favorite but it is the first one I started working on. I have tryed to look up tutorials on new born skin editing and everything that came up is done thru someone selling or using "actions" please feel free to share any techniques on editing the skin. Also please feel free to C&C my edit and my posing of the baby. Thanks for your time.

[/URL] jacob by EricJimenezPhoto, on Flickr[/IMG]

 

[TimothyJinx]

This is not specifically for babies but it can work.
New Skin Smoothing Technique | Lee Varis

 

[frommrstomommy]

This is not specifically for babies but it can work.
New Skin Smoothing Technique | Lee Varis

Very cool! Might have to give that a go sometime.

To OP.. I don't think this newborn needs much in the way of skin retouching.. he looks pretty good as is to me. What are you editing in? Sometimes I bring down clarity a few notches or up the luminance for noise reduction in Lightroom and that does some smoothing for me when its not needing anything major.

 

[Rebekah5280]

I softened the shadows a bit here and warmed up the picture (I tend to like warmer pictures, just my personal preference).
Skin smoothing isn't really necessary after softening the shadows a bit, but, I duplicated the layer and then add a gaussian blur. Then I added a layer mask, inverted it, and then painted it on. I then used the opacity slider to get the smoothing effect I wanted without making the baby too plastic looking. THEN, I sharpened the eye slits, and mouth.
This was a quick edit so its not perfect of course, but this is what the above steps created:

 

[ewick]

I softened the shadows a bit here and warmed up the picture (I tend to like warmer pictures, just my personal preference).
Skin smoothing isn't really necessary after softening the shadows a bit, but, I duplicated the layer and then add a gaussian blur. Then I added a layer mask, inverted it, and then painted it on. I then used the opacity slider to get the smoothing effect I wanted without making the baby too plastic looking. THEN, I sharpened the eye slits, and mouth.
This was a quick edit so its not perfect of course, but this is what the above steps created:
View attachment 43650

This is somewhat what I was looking for. What I meant by 'skin editing' was how to make the skin nice and even and creamy. I like your edit better and I am going to re-edit. I feel like my edit is a bit on the red side.