Title • light on the beach (1)

After my complaints of yesterday – that I hadn't been able to take any decent shots over the last few days – we took the kids to the beach, and I got four shots that I'm happy with.

As for this one, it's the first of two portraits: this one is of our youngest (18 months old), and tomorrow's is of our almost three year old, and both were processed in the same way. First: use a Channel Mixer adjustment to extract the Red Channel, reducing the image to black and white (which is particularly effective for portraits as it lifts skin tones quite dramatically). Second, using a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer, ABOVE the Channel Mixer layer, colourise the image. What you can then do (though I didn't bother in this instance) is play around with the opacity of the Channel Mixer layer to adjust the tonal range/balance of the final image.

I'm pleased with this one, and as always, I'd be interested to hear what you think.