Photoshop Fun continued

I've been a major addict to Photoshop lately.  I am a beginner when it comes to Photoshop.  I wish I knew how to use it better.  But I started seeing inspiration through Pinterest and then viewing online tutorials to see if I could achieve the same looks.  Ideally, I would take a Photoshop class.  I really enjoy learning in a classroom setting, but my time and budget does not allow for that at the moment.  So instead, I'm going to set a goal of learning 3-4 new Photoshop techniques a week online.  Here's some stuff I've been playing with today...

The main thing I was trying to learn here is how to sharpen the eyes through layering.  I watched a video tutorial and it was very simple to achieve.  I also changed the brightness/levels in the photo and used a smooth action to even out the skin and hair.  I overdid it a bit with the smoothing which resulted in the After photo looking pretty fake.  But I was trying to over exaggerate to really see the effect.

Next I learned how to make a black and white image and manually select what I want to be in color.  I achieved this by layering a black&white duplicate of the photo on top of the color photo, then adding a mask to color out what I wanted to show through (the stuff I wanted in color).  This was really simple.  There might be another way to do this, but I just tried this way based on what I learned yesterday on laying textures.

Then in this photo, I followed a tutorial on how to achieve back-lighting.  This one I thought was a little more complicated just because it was not as intuitive.  Maybe once I get a little better understanding of Photoshop, I'll be able to recall the steps for this one easier.  Also, the photo that you start with actually has to be back-lit to begin with.  This one was not.  But I did read a good tutorial on how to achieve nice back-lighting in your photos using the sunset.  Then the results will be much better with Photoshop.  I'll practice that in my next shoot.  But here's how my non-back-lit original photo turned out.

I also attempted to edit a ray of light into a photo.  I just couldn't seem to get it to work right.  It completely washed out my photos.  I'll give it a go another day.