Editing Speed bump

rickp

I’ve ran into a PPing speed bump. I took this picture of my fiancee and I really like it, I like the hair on her face and the overall look. However the image needs some help with color and lighting to start with.

The specific part I’m having a problem with is the sun filled hair. For starters there’s some clipping going on and every time I try to mess with color or lighting things go south and the image starts to look really bad.

How would you guys handle this editing.
BTW I'm using CS5 and lightroom

Here’s the image in question.

pathfinder

Lovely image, with nice warm light.

Was this shot in RAW, or is this an original jpg?

The clipping in the hair will be more manageable ( maybe ) if it was shot in RAW.

Can you make the RAW file available, via Drop box, or email?

With the image you posted, you can select the blown hair with the Quick Select tool, blur the edges of the selection, and paint some color back with the Brush tool in Color Blend mode, after sampling the color of her hair near the crown of her head. If you do this on a layer you can fade the opacity back a bit, and multiply blend the selection with itself when it gets too bright and light. But is very hard to make it look much better than it looks here in your image... which I rather like, even with the hot hair in the sunlight.

I think I might crop the right or left side of the image to move her off center a bit too.

rickp

pathfinder,
I did shoot this in RAW and converted to dng during import to LR.
I can export the file in PSD or DNG. Which do you prefer.
Files are a bit big to email and I'm not familiar with Drop Box, but I just installed it so I'll see how that works. I'll need your help to be able to get you the file without messing with it a bit.

I think you see the same thing I see with this image. It's got something that says, don't mess with a lot.

I didn't even get that far up in my workflow to even worry about cropping, but you are rigth I'll move her over some so she's not centered.

R.

rickp

pathfinder,
I got Drop Box and I uploaded the file but the link doesn't work. Any suggestions on what I might be doing wrong?

pathfinder PM your email if its ok so I can add you or send you an invite to the shared folder of Drop Box. For some reason the URL is not working.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/26749637/IMG_1923-Edit.dng

R>

pathfinder

As I said in my PM, Ric, even in the dng file, the highlights in the hair and on the are over 4 stops over exposed, and even with the exposure slider at - 4, and the recovery slider all the way to the right, one still does not have hair highlights that look remotely accurate or attractive. So one cannot use Smart Objects to try to do two separate renderings of the RAW file for blending.

I think the only option is to try to clone in some color and pattern from the rest of her hair, but my attempts at this were pretty darned poor. Even with color blending and multiply blending, it just did not look attractive.

The other alternative is just to accept the blown highlights as they are. I think they may be the best choice, in this circumstance. I think the only thing that would have helped here is some fill light, from either a reflector, or a speedlite.

If shot in Manual mode, the flash in ETTL, the flash would light up her face, and you could have under exposed those bright highlights in the background to de-emphasize them as well. I think this is worth a reshoot.....

Pretty lady.

Sam

There isn't any way to brink back the hair. You would have to jump through flaming hoops to try something. Like pose her against a green screen and shoot the same pose and try to swap hair. Like I said jumping through a flaming hoop.

I would try something like this:

Sam

pathfinder

Very nice, Sam.

I kind of took a different tack, cropped the hot shoulder out, selected the hot hair, did a multiply blend, followed by a color blend from her crown painted over the hot hair, darkened the background, and added a vignette, all done on the jpg from this thread.

Something like this..

rickp

Thanks guys, it's what I figured. The first thing I tried was all the sliders in LR (recovery, exposure, burning etc...) and nothing. I didn't consider cloning or anything to that effect.

What would have been great to have here is a diffuser on that side softening the sun, unfortunately it was just her and I playing around waiting for the sun to set so I could get another set of images I wanted.

Again, thanks guys for your time, it's much appreciated.

R.

Sam

We all see the world differently. Ain't it great!

Sam