Brittnee Photo Edit

We start with the base picture from the camera:

We add a layer, desaturate it to black and white, invert it, blur it slightly, and overlay it over the original to help brighten the darker parts of the picture, and darken the brighter parts:

We duplicate the original photo, move it above the previous layer to enhance the colors that may have been faded by the previous actions:

Now, we get complicated. Color detect select the red-eye part of the pictures and create a new layer containing ONLY the red-eye part. Desaturate, invert, blur heavily, then overlay it above the top color enhancing layer and set the opacity to right below the level before the color begins to wash out. Then, to create a bit of softness and "cartoonishness" to the picture, duplicate the base, original photo into two new layers and move them up. Each of these new layers should have edge detect black run on them. Then, desaturate, invert, and blur both. One should be blurred heavily, one very lightly. This gives the edges of color zones a darkness that sort of looks airbrushed. Set each of these layers to overlay, or, for a more dramatic, almost comic-book effect, set them to normal and lower the opacity to somewhere around 30%:

And the final touch, the thought bubble:

And that's it. A brighter, more colorful, and somewhat cartoonish looking picture from a normal, somewhat washed-out looking picture off the camera. Enjoy.