Shoot and Edit: Love/Romance edit

I went round and round on my edit this week.  I think I set myself up for a challenge when I chose to use a photo with so little color.  Thank goodness for the snapshots option in Photoshop's History window.  Every change or two, I made a snapshot.  Then I went back and forth between them seeing what I liked and didn't. 

I meant to take notes of the steps - part of my reason for doing the snapshots was to make that easier.  Then I forgot to check before I closed the window and, of course, this would be one of those times where I did not save a .psd file.  That said, to the best of my memory here's what I did ...

• Adjusted the levels.  Setting the white and black points, shifting the input and output until I liked what I saw.  
• I used the clone tool to clean up around the top of the ring holder.  It looked dusty in the original photo.  It wasn't - just the way the light was bouncing off the top. 
• Created new layer for high filter.  Lowered the layer's opacity to 75%.  
• New adjustment layer - curves.  Adjusted settings for shadows, midtones, highlights.  (My version of PS does not have the awesome graph in the background - just a grid - so jealous of that! I think it would make my process a bit different.)
• New adjustment layer - brightness/contrast.  Adjusted slightly.
• New adjustment layer - hue/saturation.  Adjusted saturation only.
• New fill layer - gradient.  Changed the angle and scale.  Layer mode to soft light. 
• New fill layer - solid color.  I used a very light yellow and reduced the layer opacity.
  

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