made an error in judgement...can anybody help?

WingsOfLovePhoto

Good morning dgrinners.... I did a large family group shot and made a big mistake...put bigger people in the front, thinner tall people in the back and stood too close getting quite a bit of perspective distortion... is there a photoshop technique that can correct that? Make the bigger people in the back look bigger or the people in the front look smaller? Been searching the web and can't come up with a solution... thought I would try here. Thanks in advance for any responses! Very frustrated!

Richard

WingsOfLovePhoto wrote:

Good morning dgrinners.... I did a large family group shot and made a big mistake...put bigger people in the front, thinner tall people in the back and stood too close getting quite a bit of perspective distortion... is there a photoshop technique that can correct that? Make the bigger people in the back look bigger or the people in the front look smaller? Been searching the web and can't come up with a solution... thought I would try here. Thanks in advance for any responses! Very frustrated!

You could try using perspective corrected crop or even free transform in Photoshop, but I suspect it's not going to be easy to change their size while still keeping them natural looking. Post a sample and maybe we can give it a shot. BTW, I think this belongs in Finishing School, so I'm going to move it there.

WingsOfLovePhoto

Thanks Richard.... here it is...in all it's big mistake glory...unedited... learned a big lesson here.....

Richard

WingsOfLovePhoto wrote:

Thanks Richard.... here it is...in all it's big mistake glory...unedited... learned a big lesson here.....

Well, I took a crack at it, but I'm afraid I couldn't do anything that didn't make somebody look like they had stepped out of a fun-house mirror. Hopefully, someone with better skills will be able to help. Sorry.

ziggy53

The 2 ladies in front are drawing attention partly because of their clothing. I would attempt to darken the clothing to help from drawing so much attention. The patterns are also distracting so I would also add some blur.

The front row has a brighter exposure than the back row. Use a graduated filter in ACR to accommodate. I would also add some vignetting to darken the corners, again trying to focus some attention back to the people.

I also color corrected the flesh tones.

If it's a really important shot then I also suggest doing something about the window reflection (but I didn't try anything.)

Finally, something like this:

zoomer

In photoshop there is Perspective control where you can grab the top corners and push them in, that will even out the guys heads on the top row ends, don't overdo it.
Really if you don't mention it odds are they will not even notice it.
As mentioned quite a bit of light fall off from the lighting, that is what is really making the photo look uneven more so that the placing of the people.
See how in Ziggy's example you don't notice the problem anymore.

So yes it can be fixed....someone will come along and describe the process to you hopefully. I am work so cannot access photoshop right now.

Jane B.

WingsOfLovePhoto wrote:

Thanks Richard.... here it is...in all it's big mistake glory...unedited... learned a big lesson here.....

You seem to have avoided a chronic problem of mine though — someone hiding behind a person or persons in front of them. It seems that the more people in the group the more likely I am not to catch this when if I did I could have them move slightly before shooting.

Jane B.

RalphAdam

WingsOfLovePhoto wrote:

Good morning dgrinners.... I did a large family group shot and made a big mistake...put bigger people in the front, thinner tall people in the back and stood too close getting quite a bit of perspective distortion... is there a photoshop technique that can correct that? Make the bigger people in the back look bigger or the people in the front look smaller? Been searching the web and can't come up with a solution... thought I would try here. Thanks in advance for any responses! Very frustrated!

There are several good video tutorials floating around, Russell Brown has one I believe, as does the NAAP site, on how to make folks look thinner -- involves use of the spherize filter, and a bit of the liquify filter -- also, you can tilt the image forward, to remove the perspective problem, with the lens distortion filter and the perspective features on free transform. Of course, it goes without saying (and forgive me for saying it ) to do all the corrections on a separate layer -- in fact, I would use a separate file. Good luck! ....... Ralph

pathfinder

What focal length lens was used for this shot?

I looked in the exif data, but the information was not there..

hawkeye978

I doesn't look like a perspective issue. When I look at the window in the back all the lines appear straight (admittedly without looking zoomed in). So I'm not sure it's a keystoning issue. My next thought (and maybe this is where Pathfinder is going) is that you are getting some wide angle lens distortion. The subjects closer to the lens would appear larger than those farther away.

zoomer

Look at the two guys heads on the ends of the back row.

pathfinder

Yup, WingsofLove has not answered what lens was used, but did say that she "stood too close"

That makes me think this was a wide angle shot ( which I think is what zoomer sees also ), which emphasizes the near portion of the image, over the distance portion, and begins to distort the fellows heads in the corners of the image - Hard to just wipe that away in Photoshop I think.

WingsOfLovePhoto

This was shot on F9 1/200 with a focal length of 40 on a 24-70 lens. So I wasn't at it's widest but was a bit closer than I probably should have. The unfortunate part is that they did notice the problem and brought it to my attention. I tried doing a panoramic crop and getting rid of some of the busyness in the outfits in the front but they didn't like that. Not sure why these people chose these particular outfits... So basically what everybody is saying that there is no hope of fixing the distortion in photoshop? I could actually put them on a different background all together and maybe piece them in a little differently ? Not sure how that would work. I do agree with the light fall off... this was a pretty crazy shoot with this many people.. I got one good one of all the kids together. Now they just need one of these? If there are any other suggestions out there..... Thanks so much to those who responded and to Ziggy for giving it a whirl... I definitely like the lighting change....

ziggy53

Here is Filter-Distort-Spherize +11

pathfinder

Nicely done, Ziggy!

bmoreshooter

Quick try. Using distort.

restructured.jpg

bmoreshooter

bmoreshooter wrote:

Quick try. Using distort.

restructured.jpg

Imade the women in the front smaller and darkened the reflection in the window. I also enlarged the heads of the men in the back row to make them morre propotionate to the women in the front.