When the light is harsh

alaios

Hi,
I wanted to ask this some time ago... when you end up with some harsh lighting on the face that you did not notice earlier... can you somehow reduce the "pain" (I guess aleviating it is not an option).
I am sharing two photos below with two different levels of harsh lighting on the face where ugly shadows are visible....What can I do to somehow "save" the shots?

Two thinks came to my mind.

1. Make the harsh shadows look softer but still the shot then would not look better
2. Embrace the shadows... Perhaps turn more black the shadows and more places of the face as there was a deep shadow to parts of his face. For that I am not sure how to start and I really need some suggestion on how to start.

Here are the links:




Regards and thanks
Alex

pathfinder

Alex,the way to deal with the shadows on your subjects face is to see them before you make your exposure, and decide, before you press the shutter, if you might like to move the subject to the shade, or insert a scrim in the sunlight path, or add fill flash, or however you decide to deal with the lighting.

After the exposure is done, your choices are more limited. One can use the Shadow slider in LR or ACR to lighten the shadows, but they are not going away, they will just less intense.

Many years ago when folks shot film, they almost always stood their subjects directly in the sunlight ( like it said on the Kodak box I think - film was a lot slower then ) and the pictures were of people with eyes slammed shut, grimacing, and the family got their picture done.

A better solution is to move the subject into the shade, of if that is not possible, add fill flash or a reflector to help even out the lighting on the face. But to do this, you have to learn to see it before you press the shutter.

I always liked to place folks in north window light, the light was always soft and gentle to my victims. You could have had the young man turn 90 degrees to his left, and the sun would have been on the back of his head, and his face would no longer have dense shadows.

Learn to use fill flash in bright sunlight, it will solve a lot of issues too. It is very easy, put your camera in Av mode with High Speed Synch turned on, add in about -2/3 stop of flash exposure compensation, meter on the face, flash in ETTL, and fire away. -- http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=665711&postcount=3

alaios

Hi,
this is one of the cases that you open the file in lightroom and you are like "Nooo, why I did not see that earlier?"
I bought a flash and I would start using it soon (even though my cameras body restricts me considerably on that...)

Still I would try lifting the shadows or even increasing them in half of the page as like the hood was hiding part of the face.

What do you think?
Alex

ziggy53

The images that you linked are to SmugMug size XL, and only 510 x 768 pixels; not too large. The first image is probably the more desirable, since he is more tilted down with eyes shut in the second image.

Taking the first image into Photoshop CS2, I was able use layers to create something potentially more to your liking.

First I enlarged the image by 2x, which simply gave me more pixels from which to make selections for masks.

Since I only wanted to correct the face, I used an elliptical Marquee Tool to select the face. From this selection I made a new layer using:

Layer

New

Layer From Copy

... and renamed this layer "Face".

Going back to the Background (original) layer, I selected another elliptical region of the face from which to match color. In this case I chose the upper right brow (our left). I made a new layer, using the same method as above, and renamed that layer, "Skin to match".

Going to the Face layer, I used:

Select

Color Range

... to select just the shadow face tones (the tones I wish to adjust).
*Edit: After this selection I applied a 5 pixel Feather, to smooth the tonal transitions.

From that selection I made a new layer, using the same method as above, and renamed that layer, "Skin to change".

Making sure that the "Skin to change" layer is still selected, I used:

Image

Adjustments

Match Color

... making sure to change the Source to this filename, and the Source Layer to "Skin to match".

Now I adjusted the Fader to ""85", or so, to make the change more natural looking. (I just want to lighten the shadows, not try to make them the same as the other side of the face, which looks very unnatural.)

Now just Flatten the layers and save as a new image. (The eyes could still use some work at this point.)

The resulting image is:

alaios

Hi there all and I realyl want to thank you for your help and time spent.
I have followed your advice and I also tried to remove the problems in lightroom by
using radial and gradual filters, spot removal (tryed to see if I can reduce shadows by marking them as bad spots). I also opened up shadows e.t.c
I finally tried to paint up the face so I create even more shadows, as I sais before, as the hood casts shadow at the half of the face.

Unfortunately, all the variations I came up with keep looking as casual snapshots and nothing of greater level and quality. I am pretty sure that a photoshop specialist can do miracles if spends some considerable time to work in the face. I guess that the lesson learned (even though it was known) is that if you do not do the shot right you have to spend hours sitting on a pc, while it would be better to spend those hours improving your shooting technique.

Your comments
Alex