can someone help me with colors on a jpg?

cow

hello,

i am a newbie photographer and i need some help. i have just been going through my picture collection and categorizing them. i came across a great picture of my wife (well, i think it's great anyway!), but i noticed the colors were absolutely terrible. asking family and such, i came to the realization that i took this picture on a vacation with my sister's camera. it's a p&s canon powershot g5 and my sister had it set to raw mode instead of jpg. i have no experience with raw images whatsoever.

herein lies the problem.

my father managed to download all the pictures we took that day onto his laptop and convert them to jpg. whatever program he used, i don't think it took colors into account because they all appear very strange looking.

alas, the raw images are no longer anywhere to be found. my father's best guess is that he converted the images to jpg and then deleted the raw pictures to save disk space.

my question to all of you is--is there any way to restore the color on this photograph as a jpg? or is this only something that can be tweaked with the original raw image? i have access to photoshop at the university and i tried adjusting the levels of the image, but nothing seemed to help. sadly, that is the extent of my knowledge of photoshop.

i will post the image here to see if anyone can play around with it to perhaps get lucky and make it somewhat close to the real colors.

i appreciate anyone's help that is willing to offer!

here is a link to the picture:
http://lotech.org/%7Ejeff/digipics/103_vacation.jpg

nickphoto123

cow wrote:

hello,

........... I came across a great picture of my wife (well, i think it's great anyway!), but i noticed the colors were absolutely terrible. ..............................
...........my question to all of you is--is there any way to restore the color on this photograph as a jpg?
...........i appreciate anyone's help that is willing to offer!

here is a link to the picture:
http://lotech.org/%7Ejeff/digipics/103_vacation.jpg

Hi Cow,

That is a pretty good picture for a P&S. The pose is just right. A bit dark.
When a scene is underexposed, the ability of the sensor to properly record color is handicapped. But it is easy to 'correct'.

I ran it through Photoshop Elements 4.0 on my laptop, (my PS CS is on my PC). I selected 'Auto Color", 'Auto Levels" , and "the default of "Shadow Highlight". Here is what i got:

The brick colors are quite natural. Not having seen your wife in person, I can say the colors of her skin, lipstick and hair is excellent.

Hope this helps you some.

Regards, Nichoas

cyoung

Here's my crack at fixing the photo. Ran the basic pop tutorial, adjusted levels, duplicated the layer and screened it, adjusted opacity to lighten the photo, then ran unsharp mask 150%Radius 1 Threshold 10. I'm just a beginner photoshopper too and it sure is fun!





Link to Original file size
http://www.smugmug.com/photos/56324689-O.jpg

cow wrote:

hello,

i am a newbie photographer and i need some help. i have just been going through my picture collection and categorizing them. i came across a great picture of my wife (well, i think it's great anyway!), but i noticed the colors were absolutely terrible. asking family and such, i came to the realization that i took this picture on a vacation with my sister's camera. it's a p&s canon powershot g5 and my sister had it set to raw mode instead of jpg. i have no experience with raw images whatsoever.

herein lies the problem.

my father managed to download all the pictures we took that day onto his laptop and convert them to jpg. whatever program he used, i don't think it took colors into account because they all appear very strange looking.

alas, the raw images are no longer anywhere to be found. my father's best guess is that he converted the images to jpg and then deleted the raw pictures to save disk space.

my question to all of you is--is there any way to restore the color on this photograph as a jpg? or is this only something that can be tweaked with the original raw image? i have access to photoshop at the university and i tried adjusting the levels of the image, but nothing seemed to help. sadly, that is the extent of my knowledge of photoshop.

i will post the image here to see if anyone can play around with it to perhaps get lucky and make it somewhat close to the real colors.

i appreciate anyone's help that is willing to offer!

here is a link to the picture:
http://lotech.org/%7Ejeff/digipics/103_vacation.jpg

System

this is a good thread on correcting color:
http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=27133

also, check out the tutorials and go over the ones on 'pop'-

on my take on your pic I cropped, used levels and curves and then hue and saturation to try to bring the color back to something more natural-

george

Mike258

One More Effort
Here is one effort.

cow

thank you everyone for your insight and quick responses. i will go through the pop tutorial you speak of to try on some of my other photos from this vacation. in addition, i will try the steps you used, cyoung, in photoshop to see how it changes the photo each step.

doing a side by side comparison of the before and after pictures, i can see an amazing difference!

i think next i will post some of my favorite pictures on the whipping post and get some more critiques!

thanks again everyone!

David_S85

Cow, I had to give it my try also.

I used Paint Shop Pro. Shadow masking to recover the background, local contrast enhancement boosting to make it "pop," I straightened it, corrected the white balance, and slightly sharpened. If her shirt is actually a purple-blue, then I got this right.

Your pic is at the end of this gallery.

Link to your full-sized pic below...

http://davidwatts.smugmug.com/photos/56380855-O.jpg

Dixie

Here's my attempt. I used nik pro EFEX filters, Hue/Saturation, levels, and contrast/brightness. I used Hue/Sat to reduce the yellows and reds slightly.

I have the full size adjusted image, but it is about 2.5 megabytes. Let me know how to get it to you if you want it.

Andyman

Here's my try:

MesaMan

Andyman you win....looks the best to me! Well done.

thhowl

EXIF information embedded in the JPEG
The EXIF information embedded in the JPEG shows the picture was not taken with a Canon G5, nor in RAW, nor was Pa ever involved. This picture was taken with a $99 MSRP (read $49 street or less) no-name brand camera: Concord Eye-Q 3346z. (3.1 Megapixel) Link to camera here:

http://www.concord-camera.com/products_detail.aspx?id=202


Nonetheless, good job fixing the image everyone. I tried, but lost patience. :-)

DavidTO

Here's mine:



Original here.

Andyman

MesaMan wrote:

Andyman you win....looks the best to me! Well done.

Thank you = ).

Lucky Hack

I could be wrong, but it looks to me like the files may have been imported with the wrong white balance setting. If you like what I've done with the image,then
1. do an auto levels
2. using hue / saturation, edit only the yellow hue pull the slider to the left twelve or so hue units
3. subtract a little red using the same method...

The wrong white balance mode can make photographs look really wierd and it's really a bummer, but just keep experimenting with pushing the yellows and reds around in different amounts...

hoping this message finds you well -Ian