Can some one help me with his face?

photofreak

:scratch

Stustaff

photofreak wrote:

Have you stuck that on????

and what do you want help doing with it?

Making it look like its not stuck on?

photofreak

Stustaff wrote:

Have you stuck that on????

and what do you want help doing with it?

Making it look like its not stuck on?

No...this is the actual photo. My flash went off and it only got his face. She looks great and she loves the look on her face. And, of course she wants to order this one. Just didn't want to print it like this...wondering what I can do...should I outline the head and try to darken that way?
Thanks for any help at all.
Mandi
www.mandraleephotography.com

meewolfie

Mandi - Maybe you can tone his face down just a bit - select it and knock down the hightlights. Making the necessary adjustments so the corrected lighting and coloring matches his skin tone elsewhere.

And - lighten her up a little so that the exposure on both of them matches somewhere in the middle. When I first looked at the photo, I was on my laptop at work and it always displays everything a bit darker. The contrast difference between them was really obvious and her features were barely visible.

If you lighten her up a bit, you won't have to make the changes to his face as significant and so there will be less of a chance of your retouch work looking overdone.

Hope that helps. I'm assuming you know how to do these things from a technical perspective and are just looking for a "strategy" on where to start - which is why those details are missing in my suggestion.

Mary

leuallen

Don't think there is much help for this. The direction of light in the mans face is all wrong. It is from the front with a small light source. The rest of the picture is from the back-right side and soft. Highlights on the mans face are all in the wrong places.

If you darken the mans face it looks phoney I tried it and the results were too bad to post.

Note that in darkening the mans face you will have all sorts of issues with color shift and color saturation.

Larry

If you have another similar image with the mans face and no flash maybe you could swap heads.

DavidTO

While this can never be totally fixed, there is a lot of improvement that can be made in this shot.

This version has 5 curves adjustment layers with different masks and blending modes.

Is this what you're after? If you like it, I could send you the PSD file of this smaller version and you could use that to recreate the effect on the original. This version is not perfect, I spent about 3 minutes on it.

leuallen

Best I could do.

Larry

jfriend

Nice photo, here's an edit

photofreak wrote:

It's a nice photo once it get's fixed up. I did a number of editing steps:

• I applied a general curve to raise the shadowed part of the man's face and the woman in the foreground
• I painted a mask over the sky and bright parts of the face on the curve such that they match the rest of the image
• I did a little shadow/highlights adjustment to both bring out more detail in the shadows and more detail in some of the highlights
• Using curves I did a minor tweak on the color of the man's face as it looked a little too red
• A little sharpening
• I also included a version with a little tighter crop (less sky above his head), but that's certainly optional

Those steps gave me this:


And your original:


And my edits with a little tighter crop:

jfriend

One more...

jfriend wrote:

It's a nice photo once it get's fixed up. I did a number of editing steps

Here's another one with the highlights in the man's face pulled down a little further with a curve to try to remove more of the "flash look" and blend with the tonality of the rest of the image.

DavidTO

jfriend wrote:

John,

There's a lot to like about what you've done with this image, but to my eye you've been too aggressive with the shadows.

jfriend

Artistic choice or technical comment?

DavidTO wrote:

John,

There's a lot to like about what you've done with this image, but to my eye you've been too aggressive with the shadows.

The shadows in the original were pretty dark. The picture could work by leaving them that way - it depends upon what the person doing the post processing wants for a look. I was trying for something that was closer to what would have happened if the fill-flash had covered the whole frame.

Do you think I've been too aggressive in the shadows because you like the tonal contrast in the original better (e.g. a different artistic choice) or because there's something unnatural or undesirable about the shadows in my edited version or something else? FYI, most of the shadow move came from a curve, not shadow/highlights - I try not to do big moves with shadow/highlights because they can have unnatural looking side effects.

rosselliot

I thought the one I tried was just...a little less noticeable and distinctly "flashy" than the other...

don't know if it's good enough - but thought I'd give it a try...

- RE

Mike Lane

I don't know jfriend... his head still looks like it's a bit stuck on there don't you think?

R Johns

A little Dodging...
A little Burning... A little Cropping... A little Bordering...



Russ

DavidTO

jfriend wrote:

The shadows in the original were pretty dark. The picture could work by leaving them that way - it depends upon what the person doing the post processing wants for a look. I was trying for something that was closer to what would have happened if the fill-flash had covered the whole frame.

Do you think I've been too aggressive in the shadows because you like the tonal contrast in the original better (e.g. a different artistic choice) or because there's something unnatural or undesirable about the shadows in my edited version or something else? FYI, most of the shadow move came from a curve, not shadow/highlights - I try not to do big moves with shadow/highlights because they can have unnatural looking side effects.

I think the shot needs a black point, and yours looks too washed out to my eye. You did a lot of great work in evening the image out, better than the rest, IMO.

I set a black point in shadow area in the woman's legs, which resulted in an image that was way too saturated. I used hue/saturation to pull back on that. John, this is your image with those tweaks:

jfriend

I like it

DavidTO wrote:

I think the shot needs a black point, and yours looks too washed out to my eye. You did a lot of great work in evening the image out, better than the rest, IMO.

I set a black point in shadow area in the woman's legs, which resulted in an image that was way too saturated. I used hue/saturation to pull back on that. John, this is your image with those tweaks:

I agree, your mods are a nice improvement.

FYI, one thing I sometimes do when setting a black point that seems to mess with the colors is to switch the adjustment layer to luminosity blend mode and I get the black point without messing with the colors.

DavidTO

jfriend wrote:

I agree, your mods are a nice improvement.

FYI, one thing I sometimes do when setting a black point that seems to mess with the colors is to switch the adjustment layer to luminosity blend mode and I get the black point without messing with the colors.

True, but more often than not for me, it neutralizes any color cast and improves the shot.

Skippy

photofreak wrote:

Here's my try at it......... I just drew around his face and his shoulders with the laso tool and darkened it a bit. ....... Skippy (Australia)

imann08

I didn't do anything with the image except get the man closer to the rest of it. I like what others have done in brightening it up but that's just one more step with what I have. I also tried to add some color on the woman's blown-out forehead. I saw that someone mentioned the need for selections etc etc and this just isn't necessary.

What I did was this.
-While the image was still in RGB, I blended the green with the red channel in darken mode.
- I changed the layer blending mode to luminosity.
- I added a mask so it would not effect the woman or anything below the damage. Granted this is a selection but a crude one and the only one.
- I transferred the image to LAB without flattening the image first.
- Using the Blend If command, I took out anything blue or slightly yellow.
- Then flattened the image and created a new layer.
- With that layer I used the burn tool to take out the red in his face and the brightness.
- With one more new layer I added some color to the woman's blown-out forehead and changed the blending mode to color.

With a little work it has room for improvement but there you go.

imann08

I figured I'd give it another go.

photofreak

Mike Lane wrote:

I don't know jfriend... his head still looks like it's a bit stuck on there don't you think?

:lol4 :lol4 :lol4 :lol4
This was their engagment photo...I think it works...not sure if she will.
Mandi
www.mandraleephotography.com

photofreak

thank you for the help!!!
What an incredible help you all have been!!!! I will definitely utilize this forum more. These were evening shots (the rest of the gallery can be seen here www.mandraleephotography.com "relationships" "Emily and Adam" The unlocked gallery does not have this one. The client wanted to see all the photos...so after posting them...of course she wanted this one!!! One day I will learn not to post something unless I know I can fix it.
Thank you all for all you help. I will get to work with what you have offered.
Much much appreciated.
mandi Lee


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Andyman

Here's my go at it:

Mine:



Original:

photofreak

Thank you for taking the time...much apprciated

Mine:



Original:

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