Editing and Beautiful Lips

A lot of people think my pictures look just like they do on my blog SOOC (straight out of camera) but it actually takes quite a few steps in Photoshop to give them the extra punch I like. Here is a picture of my friend's beautiful daughter (oh, why can't I have lips like that!) straight out of my camera. It looks OK, but is a little boring and definitely not as sharp as I would like...
To make this photo pop, I first used the lighten and slight sharpen action from pioneer woman's first set, I adjusted the opacity until I liked the way it looked. (you can download them here, they are free). Then I used the fresh and colorful action from the same set. I also wanted a little bit of glow, so it wouldn't look so flat. I used my diffuse and glow. (in Photoshop go to filter-distort-diffuse and glow) I set the glow amount to 1 and the clear amount to 14. (if you decide it looks too bright you can go to edit-fade diffuse and glow and adjust it) Then I decided to sharpen just a little more with my unsharp mask (in Photoshop, go to filter-sharpen-unsharp mask) and I set the amount to 20% and the radius to 30. Then I went in to brighten the eyes using my eye doctor action from MCP actions. (you can purchase it here) I sharpened the eyes and slightly brightened the catchlights and iris. (I also have her magic skin action and I love it, I didn't need to use it here, but believe me, I use it on myself!!!) OK, as if that isn't enough, I still wanted it a little brighter so I went to the levels (go to image-adjustment-levels) and I moved the bar all the way to the right hand side a little to the left. Here is the result...Then I wanted to see what it would look like in black and white so I used my Indie Fave BnW action (you can purchase it here)...I wanted to try one more so I used Brenda's b/w 2 action (you can purchase it here)... did I mention that I really want her lips!!!I did the normal editing on this one and sharpened the feet a little (with the sharpen THIS action from pioneer woman's second set, download here) to make them stand out more...I love little feet :)For this last one, after my normal editing, I used another one of Brenda's actions (brown tone for color)... I love her smile!