is it possible to save this photo?

nicnelly

I know you have to start somewhere but this is painful...even for a newbie. Any rescue advice?

Allen

nicnelly wrote:

I know you have to start somewhere but this is painful...even for a newbie. Any rescue advice?

How's this for a quick slam bam.:D

nicnelly

Allen wrote:

How's this for a quick slam bam.:D

much better, thank you! can you tell me what you did?

Allen

nicnelly wrote:

much better, thank you! can you tell me what you did?

This was very quick and I'm sure with more detailed work it could be vastly
improved. I opened in PSPX2 and the main thing was reducing saturation.
Then applied some sharpening. There is a lot of motion blur but it can maybe be cleaned up with some very fine cloning.

bmoreshooter

How about a quick b&w.

ziggy53

Here is my take.

It involved bringing the image into PS CS4, converting to 16 bit, desaturating and lightening both red and yellow tones in Hue/Saturation, creating a new layer and assigning a Gradient Overlay to lighten the background, then creating another copy of the original background as the top layer and using the Eraser tool to create a mask for the faces in the back row, allowing the lightened faces to show through, while leaving the back wall darker.

I flattened the image and shifted into CMYK mode and used a custom curve on the flesh tones to get them closer, then back to RGB mode where I used a rather strong sharpening action and finally Neat Image to reduce mostly color noise, which was exaggerated by the sharpening. The image was taken back to 8 bit for the save to a new JPG.

I note that the image was apparently captured using a Canon 20D with what appears to be the "kit" lens. I suggest that in the future, ISO 800 and an external flash with an appropriate flash modifier would allow a smaller aperture and shorter shutter speed, both of which would be desirable for this situation.