Fix it Friday

Every Friday the iheartfaces forum holds an editing challenge. This weeks photo was a tricky one, somebody's got a bit of a cold I think. Here are my attempts - the first photo is the un-edited version.

SOOC

edit 1

B&W

Here's my recipe:

first I opened the JPEG in Adobe Camera Raw, boosted the exposure to +50, recovered some highlights at +33 and upped the clarity to +18. Next I opened the picture in PSE5, cropped, made a duplicate layer and used the "adjust colour for skin tone" tool. Clone stamped and spot healed the rings under her eyes and  flattened.

I applied the CoffeeShop Perfect Portrait 2 action, and used the brush tool at the following levels: smooth skin (on chin) 40%, remove red (on effected parts) 50%, kept the contrast boost and brighness at the preset 50%. Urban grit on hair 50%, teeth and eye whites 10%, eye define 40% and bright eyes 34%. Flattened again, Pioneer Woman Quick Edge Burn put on at 23% (the coffeeshop one seemed not to take account of my crop) and applied the CoffeeShop Coffee with Cream action. For the B&W I used the Pioneer Woman B&W Beauty conversion. Just typed confusion, maybe that's a more accurate description of my technique. 

You can find all the other entries at   fix it friday #95

ETA: should have done something with that leaf *sigh*