Hello!! My BFF recently asked me to take some pics of her daughter who is 5 months old. I took some pics yesterday but I getting frustrated with the editing. Her daughter has a somewhat bad case of baby acne. It's not super bad, like red and irritated but she has hundred of white bumps across her face. I am currently trying to retouch every bump which is taking me an extremely long amount of time and I am only about a quarter of a way through editing all the pics. But even with the retouching of each bump I am not really getting good results. Ugh. I have tried to Google easier fixes but I am getting frustrated with the results I find.
Soooooo, does anyone have any secret tips that will save me some time? I have both Photoshop Elements and I recently purchased PhotoShop Creative Suite 5 (but I have yet to install it).
I am really going crazy here!

Re: Photographers please come in re: editing help :)
Have you ever played with any actions in photoshop? (elements too) You can get a free one from that Coffeshop blog and it's really good for smoothing out the skin. That sounds like it might be all you need. Here is the link to the blog..
http://www.thecoffeeshopblog.com/
And the action is Baby Powder Room. Good luck!
I am not familiar with Elements but if you use Photoshop (CS5) you can use the clone stamp tool to cover each bump, I like to use the faded brush instead of the solid brush as it blends better.
You can also go into "Image" > "Adjustments" and mess around with the red in "Selective Color" to take the redness out of the acne. Hope this helps a little.
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Editing scares me, especially the kind you're talking about. (Not because it's bad, rather because I suck at it and make people look like aliens instead of looking better.)
I would defer to Chelsea on this one. The only additional suggestions I have would be to make a layer and do your cloning on a separate layer. Sounds obvious, but I had to start from scratch several times after cloning gone seriously badly before I figured out to do that. (I'm not a quick learner.)
Also you might try the healing tool. I don't know much about it, but maybe search youtube for a tutorial on the healing tool.
Perhaps b/w conversions might be your friend in this case. :-)
That's not much, but it's all I got for ya. Sorry!
Oh, and share, if ya don't mind. (PM a link maybe? It's ok if you don't want to, though, I know not all moms would be cool with that.)
My silly Lily is almost 4.
Thanks Andrea for the Baby Powder Room Suggestion. I downloaded the action but wasn't too hopeful since I have never figured out how to successful install an action. I am happy to say that I did figure it out! I am playing around with the action right now. I would like to say that thanks to your suggestion I finally sat down and figured out how to successfully install an action! Yay!
Chelsea I will also try your suggestion. But OMG, I am new to Photoshop and I feel so overwhelmed with everything the program can do. And all the steps that need to be made. It's intense I tell you! I have a new found respect for photographers. Man, what a tedious job!
And Kate, I will be sure to post some final pics later this week. I have really screwed up some of my edits (like you said, I have the alien effect going on). I would be totally embarrassed to post those pics! Ha. I have about 100 photos to edit and some are a hot mess right now :
Baby Macy is here!
12/09 - Macy (daughter) | 4/10 - Began TTC Baby #2 | 12/10 - Chemical Pregnancy | 1/12 - Miscarriage at 14 weeks | DX - PCOS & Hyperthyroidism
Baby Macy is here!
12/09 - Macy (daughter) | 4/10 - Began TTC Baby #2 | 12/10 - Chemical Pregnancy | 1/12 - Miscarriage at 14 weeks | DX - PCOS & Hyperthyroidism
Yay!! I'm glad you like it! I like that blog because they explain how to install it and use it in pretty good detail too. If you ever start doing newborns that action will come in very very handy!!! And I also use it on pics of myself sometimes to smooth out wrinkles....but that's btwn you and me ok? haha!!
Thanks for the suggestions everyone! Oh and Junie I send you a message via FB
Here are a few of my editing pics using the Baby Powder Room Action that delta suggested. Unfortunately I didn't save any before pics but trust me when I say the skin tone, color and smoothness is MUCH better!!
http://macyryan.wordpress.com/
Baby Macy is here!
12/09 - Macy (daughter) | 4/10 - Began TTC Baby #2 | 12/10 - Chemical Pregnancy | 1/12 - Miscarriage at 14 weeks | DX - PCOS & Hyperthyroidism
Ditto Junie on retouching the photos - I kind of like the photos of L with baby acne. It looks so cute and natural and true-to-life at that stage. ::shrug::