Fairy Photo Edit

[Doretta Castoe]

PrettyPresets and Actions have completely changed my editing. When I first started photography, my work was inconsistent and far from where it is today. Using the presets and actions have simultaneously improved my work so much, not to mention all the regular tips and tutorials that Pretty Presets and Actions emails to keep me posted on things I have wanted to learn or improve on.

I always start my edits in Lightroom. In Lightroom I make the basic edits to color and exposure as well as add any presets that I want to enhance my image. For this image, I chose a preset from Pretty Presets Summer collection.

Moving your photos from Lightroom to Photoshop is super easy! Simply use the Lightroom Keyboard Shortcut CMD (Mac)/CTRL (PC) + E. If Photoshop isn't already open, it will begin opening and your image will appear in Photoshop.

Once the photo was open in Photoshop, I removed the legs of the floral hoop using the Heal tool. You can access the Photoshop Heal tool using the Photoshop keyboard shortcut J and then quickly run the tool over the legs of the hoop to remove them from your image.

If you find that you need to be more precise, then use the Photoshop Clone tool. With the Clone tool, you can select the area of your photo that you want to clone from by alt+clicking on an area of your image and then painting over the area you want to remove.

I usually like to sharpen my subject's eyes and mouth. Its super easy to do that using one of my favorite (and most frequently used) Photoshop Action collections - the Pretty Retouch & Makeup Collection. This set has so many wonderful actions for retouching portraits in Photoshop that I can't live without

The first action I like to use from this collection is the "On the Spot Sharpener". To run it, just highlight the action and then press the "Play" button (small sideways triangle) at the bottom of the Actions Palette.

Next, I will focus on my subject's eyes. I start with the "Whiten Whites" action from the same collection as above. I zoom in on my image (keyboard shortcut CMD/CTRL + =) and paint over ONLY the whites of the eyes.

Finally, I run the "Smokey Eyes" action. But not to give her a smokey eye. I run this action and brush over the eyelashes to make them just a little bit darker. Once again, you can play with the opacity of each of these to achieve the effect you are going for.

In this image, I am going for a painted, ethereal-look so I am going to go strong on the smoothing and use the "Heavy Duty Smoother" action. After running this action, paint with a white brush over the skin areas of the image.

In this photo, my subject's skin was just little too red, so I ran the "Bye Bye Red" action. Red is often the color I most need to remove from my subjects skin. To do that, I just run the action and paint over any skin areas that seem a little too red (using a white brush).

Next, I want to bring back some warmth to my subject's skin, so I run the "Luminous Skin" action and, once again, paint with a white brush over the skin areas of the photo - and more specifically, the areas where I removed some of the red using the previous action.

NOTE: If you don't have the Holiday Magic collection, there are several other action collections that include a similar "darken image" action: Fix Exposure-Darken action in the Pure Color Workflow collection and Sundown in the Pastel Dreams collection.

The first thing I want to is add some pretty fairy wings. Start by running the Fairy Wing Applicator action which will prompt you to navigate to the place on your computer where you have saved your fairy wing overlays.

Once you have selected the fairy wing you want to add, you will need to resize and skew it slightly for placement. Press ENTER when finished. Then use a black brush to paint over any areas of your subject where the wing SHOULDN'T be showing.

Each wing will need to be placed and adjusted separately, so repeat the step above for the other wing. However, this time, flip the wing horizontally. You can do this manually (Image>Transform>Flip Horizontal) or just use the Flip Overlay Horizontal action that's included in the Fairyland collection.

Finally, I want to enhance the sun flare already in the image. I do this by running the Sunray Applicator action from the same Fairyland Actions and Overlays Collection which again, prompts me to navigate to where my sunray overlays are stored on my computer.

Once I select the Sunray overlay, I resize and adjust as needed and press ENTER to place it. Keep in mind, the applicator action allows you to customize your sunray in several different ways, including making it warmer, cooler, brighter adding blur, etc. In addition, you can adjust it using the opacity slider.

Location: To find a good location for your fairy photos, look for areas that have lots of trees, bushes, wildflowers, etc. in the background. The more greenery (or other brush) the better!

Bokeh: To get a beautiful background blur to your image, set your subject some distance from the background and shoot as wide open as you feel comfortable. This will help you achieve that perfect creamy bokeh that will add to the whimsical feel of your photo. If you are not able to acheive background blur in-camera, you can add background blur in Photoshop or Lightroom.

Background: Avoid over-exposing the background. Choose a heavily shaded area if possible with soft light peeking through - this is especially important if you want to add fireflies, fairy lights, and sun rays later in your edit.

Do you have any questions or comments about How to Edit Magical Fairy Photos? Leave us a comment below - we would love to hear from you! And PLEASE SHARE this post using the social sharing buttons (We really appreciate it)!

I am a wife and mother of four beautiful daughters, as well as a 5th grade teacher and Photographer in Southern California. I first started to dabble into photography when my children were born. I was a Momtographer making my own little monthly photo shoots for my kids and using whatever editing tools came with my desktop and cellphone. One day, I was asked by a family friend to take couple photos about a year after my 3rd daughter was born and I fell in love with it straight away. I searched the internet, watched many many youtube videos, and reached out to other amazing local photographers in my area and online to learn. Here I am four years later with my own side business in addition to teaching and busier than ever! Facebook Website

It was like drawing a clean line with the past, acknowledging the intergenerational trauma and choosing to end it at all cost. I still have shivers going through my body when I think of how I felt taking these photos. I still feel so much shame for our society to have allowed that to happen and so much anger when I look around and see how people keep ignoring the harm. Some photos will change you forever.

How has the environment and or the outdoors informed your work?

I grew up in nature between a forest, a river and a lake that was the city water reservoir. The environment was always everything for me. I was a little bit of a black sheep and felt quite lonely at times with all my passions and big dreams; nature was my safe place.

I brought one film to show my school. It was about the seal massacre in northern Quebec (my mom and sister had agreed to play the dead seal covered in ketchup). My parents were teachers, so they explained everything we saw: how the glaciers formed, the river flow, how everything evolved through time. I was raised with curiosity and a thirst to explore.

What message do you hope to share?

The balance with our environment is very fragile. Ecosystems are getting affected to a level they may not be able to recover, and I hope to help people understand we need to take better care of our mother. We need to look after her rivers, bring salmon back, leave the glacier alone, forbid development that brings crowds of selfie sticks, have the cruise ships gone so that whales can communicate, and regenerative design systems that prevent single-use plastics, hold industry accountable for ghost net and contamination, to name a few solutions.

Healing our mother comes hand in hand with healing social justice issues and healing ourselves because consumerism is a bandage. How much do we really need? What if we gave back the love our mother gave us?

A Photo Editor (APE) is edited by Rob Haggart, the former Director of Photography for Men's Journal and Outside Magazine. Contributors include fine art photographer Jonathan Blaustein (@jblauphoto), Creative Director Heidi Volpe, photography consultant Suzanne Sease and Executive Producer Craig Oppenheimer of Wonderful Machine.

Heidi: Before joining the protest at Fairy Creek were you involved in other environmental movements?

Ola: I first visited Fairy Creek in early April of this year. Prior to that in 2018 I had the privilege of living in Haida Gwaii for a year. Haida Gwaii is an archipelago off the central coast of British Columbia where Haida settlement has been proven to date back to 13,800 years. Shortly after moving to the island for a new job, I quit my job with certainty, and I found myself participating and documenting a stand where Haida citizens re-claimed the rights to their territories and put a temporary halt to a forestry operation that was expediently harvesting one of the islands last available stands of old growth red cedar.

What was your process like in terms of joining and photographing the protest camp community?

Initially I spent weekends on the mountain, getting a feel for camp. I spent time walking the lands of the Pacheedaht and Dididaht First Nation People, humbled that I had been welcomed by Elder Bill Jones and Hereditary Chief Victor Peters. I sat beneath ancient cedar trees- Grandmother and Grandfather tree up at a River Camp. I walked through mossy groves of lush old growth forest that was left intact along the river during previous logging operations. (The feeling of walking within untouched ancient old growth forest is comparable, I imagine, to the feeling of swimming in water for the first time. Sound, space and time all warp into an unfamiliar feeling. The beauty, balance, and biodiversity are simply too overwhelming to take in all at once).

3a8082e126