At Nicki’s last dr’s appointment her pediatrician commented that Nicki must “liked the orange vegetables”. Domingo thought that meant she was still wearing some of breakfast. (Confession Time: It wouldn’t have been the first time we had purees up the nose.) It wasn’t until I was taking photos of Nicki a few days later that I realized what the doctor was saying: Nicki is turning orange!

The recommendation when starting solid food is typically to stick with the orange veggies first, since they tend to be the most universally liked. The green veggies come next, followed by fruits, meats & yogurts. Gerber’s state 2 veggie options are: Carrots, Sweet Potatoes, Squash, Sweet Potatoes and Corn, Mixed Vegetable, Garden Vegetables, Green beans, and Peas. Mixed Vegetable? First ingredient is carrots. Garden Vegetables Mix? Second ingredient is carrots (and the third and final ingredient, Spinach, has beta carotene as well). That only leaves 2 non-orange options out of 9. Thinking about a meat puree? Unless it’s chicken apple, the first ingredient besides water is either sweet potatoes or… wait for it… carrots! There’s even beta carotene in breastmilk!

In other words, unless your child only eats fruits (and yogurt), there’s a good chance baby is getting a fair amount of beta carotene.

Nicki gets one vegetable, one fruit, one yogurt and rice cereal daily. We mix up the vegetables so she gets a pretty even mix. The orange veggies have lots of good nutrients necessary for her health, including beta-carotene, so I don’t really want to skimp on them in favor of more peas and green beans. Changing her diet for cosmetic reasons is beyond silly. The amount of beta carotene in her diet will decrease when she gets table food, but she’s not quite ready yet (my guess is next month) so we’re going to have to live with the orange hue a little while longer.

It’s not really noticeable. That is, until I get out the camera. The kind of lighting that brings out her beautiful dark eyes apparently also brings out that orange nose. With Easter and spring rapidly approaching, I know will be taking some more photos. I won’t have much time to do a lot of detailed work editing them (not that I know how to anyway), so I was on the hunt for a quick fix.

In the above photo the color of her nose is R:173 G:118 B:93. Her check is R:153 G:121 B:106. The Red/Blue ratio in her nose is nearly 2:1 where it’s 3:2 in her check. Green is also similarly way off. I need to add more blue and green to tone down the red. I created a second layer for the image, set my brush to R:192 G:255 B:255 and colored her nose. (I picked this color because it’s one of the 48 basic colors on my pallet. No real rhyme or reason there, just going for quick and simple.)

Next I decreased the opacity of the second layar down to 16%. Wallah! Just enough blue/green added so the red/blue and red/green ratios were not crazy off. It’s not perfect, but I think it’s pretty darn good quick fix.

As a side note, I’ve only done this to one other photo on my blog. Brownie points if you guess which one!

Posted in Family Life | Tags: Baby Development, Baby Photography, Photo Editing