How to improve this photo

t-rev

Just getting used to my 50D w/ 17-55. Shot a picture tonight for our Christmas card. Not real pleased with it. How can I improve this picture. The skin tones are a bit light for my taste. Also what are the ideal settings for shooting in front of Christmas tree?

I have both the RAW and JPEG file.

Original here: Pic

pathfinder

The folks are backlit from the table lights and tree behind them.

Might be a good time to include a bit of fill flash. You can read about the use of fill flash here

They can be improved in post processing a bit as well, but the better you get the image, in the camera at the time of shooting, the better.

du8die

Yes, fill flash would help a lot. But, your lighting (lamps, etc) are incandescent, and giving you a bunch of color balance problems. Did you shoot with Auto White Balance mode? Try changing it and see what happens.

In your RAW software, you should be able to go to some kind of HSL (Hue, Saturation, Luminance) section. Knock down the yellows and reds until it looks how you want it to.

I've attached my 2 minute attempt at color-correcting this in Photoshop. (I also put a slight vignette on it to de-emphasize the background a little.)

I think it can be fixed in post... but as pathfinder said, best to get it as close as you can in camera first.

Trevlan

That's a great job by Du8die. But like Pathfinder said, it would be idea to get it correct in camera first.

My recomendations:

Fill flash is a must. A well lit interrior is about 8-9 EV at best. Also, you might have incandecent lights and will want to drag the shutter to expose the back ground. You also will have to set your white ballance to incandescent and gel your flash with an incadecent gel. The picture will come out beautiful. You guys look great!

Zeus1

Another take on rescuing this photo:
- ameliorating in Camera Raw
- removing red eyes of the woman
- BW conversion using nik Silver Efex

pathfinder

To use fill flash in this situation, I think I would choose to shoot in full Manual Mode in the camera, with the flash in ETTL. This will let you have the background ambient lit areas exposed as you desire, while lighting the folks in the foreground correctly with your flash. With a 1/4 or 1/2 CTO gel over the speedlight, and the camera set to Incandescent WB, you should be golden.

MagnaRyder2

re: How To Improve
I took a SWAG at your photo. I'm not fully content with it, but it might
give you some ideas.
1. Rotate photo CCW just a little bit
2. Extract the people to their own layer.
3. Attempt to balance the color of the two subjects.
(I left the man a little too yellow. Plus, they might
still be too light for your taste.)
4. Drop the saturation and lightness of the background just a touch.
5. A slight gaussian blur to the background.
6. Add the vignette.