This has to be about the most photogenic baby there is. He’s the son of a friend of mine. I’ve taken many pictures of him, but this time I wanted to be sure to bring out his big, blue eyes. The best way, I figured would be to make sure everything else was colorless. I also wanted to soften the slight splotchiness of his baby skin.

Make the jump to see how I did it

Here’s how I did it:

• As always, convert image to LAB color and sharpen only the Lightness layer using Unsharp Mask. Then return to RGB color mode. (PS action here)
• Add Levels Adjustment layer (midtone = 1.05, highlight=204) to increase contrast/brightness
• Run the Coffee Cup’s Powder room action to soften the skin, define the eyes and brighten whites of the eyes.
• Hue/Saturation layer to remove color (Move saturation slider all the way to the left)
• Zoomed in and painted with black (round, medium-soft brush) on the Hue/Saturation layer to prevent the black and white effect from affecting the eyes, thereby keeping them and only them in color.

Final product on Flickr