Another Start to Finish - Editing in Photoshop

I thought it might be fun to do another post on my editing process.  All you photographers know that the photo session is just half of the story.... once we start editing the images from a session, that's when the rest of the work begins and we make the images come to life!

Keep in mind that this is just one out of hundreds of ways that you can edit an image!!  My edits usually depend on what sort of inspiration I get from the image itself.  Here is an image of the beautiful Miss 'A'  straight out of camera (SOOC). No smiles from her, which is perfectly fine.  Babies are beautiful, whether they're laughing, crying, whatever!

I was thinking that this image called for a 'vintage' feel so I used one of Nicole Van's BW & Vintage presets to achieve this: 

I touched up the face, "cleaned" up the image and also lightened it a bit to get this:

I like the way this looks, very soft and delicate, but I couldn't help but think that she looks a little lost and the background looks a little blah... so I decided to crop it for the final version to bring the viewer a little closer.... and I love how I'm completely drawn into her beautiful eyes and precious pouty lips.  Pure sweetness!!